Fundamentalism's Quotes

#1. Fundamentalism's strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith.

Alan Aldridge

#2. When predicting homosexual prejudice from fundamentalism and the full RWA scale, both predictors have positive beta weights (each is associated with increasing homosexual prejudice), but fundamentalism is the weaker predictor (.19 vs. 43

Anonymous

#3. My only enemy is right-wing religious fundamentalism.

William J. Clinton

#4. In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware

Paul Tillich

#5. 'fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception.

Krista Tippett

#6. The Bible is not religion, nor are the Vedas. The Torah is not religion, nor is the Quran, or any other scripture on earth.

Abhijit Naskar

#7. Fundamentalism fills you with answers before you even think to ask the questions.

Robert M. Price

#8. Mike Huckabee represents something that is either tremendously encouraging or deeply disturbing, depending on your point of view: a marriage of Christian fundamentalism with economic populism.

Matt Taibbi

#9. America's greatest revelation was not the atom bomb, not Fundamentalism,
not fat farms, not Elvis, not even the quite astute observation that
gentlemen prefer blondes, but the great heights to which she has propelled
ice cream.

Marisha Pessl

#10. Since the 1970s, we have witnessed the forces of market fundamentalism strip education of its public values, critical content, and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships, and the destruction of the social state.

Henry Giroux

#11. Fundamentalism is a kind of decision not to change your mind about something ... Many of us are fundamentalists ... because it worked pretty well for us.

Howard Gardner

#12. Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

Noam Chomsky

#13. Holiness in the purest form is independent of all textual doctrines, all churches and all institutions.

Abhijit Naskar

#14. An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation just like some Muslims who conseiders their sheikh as holy, some christians worship their (elder)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#15. An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

Daniel Barenboim

#16. In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.

Isabel Allende

#17. Forget organized religions. Forget scriptures. Forget Gods, Fathers, Sons and Spirits. Forget all dogmas taught by the representatives of theoretical religion, and then only you shall be able to visualize the true core of religion.

Abhijit Naskar

#18. The testament of science is so continually in a flux that the heresy of yesterday is the gospel of today and the fundamentalism of tomorrow.

Edward Kasner

#19. It is necessary to name the enemy of human civilization, and this enemy is international terrorism associated with religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance.

Milos Zeman

#20. Once dogmatism turns out the lights, you might as well close up shop as a civilization and pull up the covers as a sentient life form. You get nowhere with unquestioning certainty. It's thinking with your mind wide shut.

Bob Altemeyer

#21. There's a religious basis to their [Bush and Chaney] kind of conservatism. It's rooted in a kind of fundamentalism. I'm afraid of that. I don't like that idea. I think all extremism is suspect.

Sydney Pollack

#22. Harmony also is not a luxury, it is an evolutionary necessity, if we are to advance further. And harmony cannot be compromised for any book in the world, no matter how ancient, or who wrote it.

Abhijit Naskar

#23. I am passionate about the truth. Passion is very different from fundamentalism.

Richard Dawkins

#24. When fundamentalism comes to kill, it can kill with the language - the Apostle James says this, not me - and even with a knife, no?

Pope Francis

#25. In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.
(Canton, OH, Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918)

Eugene V. Debs

#26. That sort of fundamentalism which treats possession of private property not as a desirable economic and personal asset but as a condition of liberty is a form of primitive religion.

Neil Kinnock

#27. The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.

Azar Nafisi

#28. I think that three-act fundamentalism in film culture is a problem sometimes, because it's almost too obvious, or it's too expected. And it's not the only way to fill two hours, or to phrase things, or to order thoughts, or order ideas.

Jane Campion

#29. Today when the Fundamentalists are once more insisting that the fundamentals of fundamentalism are fundamental to our being No. 1 on the Lord's totem pole, it's very brave of you to invite the "resident atheist" of mid-Missouri to share her thoughts with you.

Ruth Hurmence Green

#30. I cannot comprehend fundamentalism. It's fundamentally wrong.

John Lydon

#31. You can be moderate in a way and still intense in your views. It's the extremism that gets frightening; religious fundamentalism and wacko-left liberalism is crazy.

Sydney Pollack

#32. I think in times of fear and hysteria in a culture, gender experimentation as it pertains to men has to go underground because it scares people too much and it's too much for people to take on. Especially when a culture is held hostage by fear and hysteria and fundamentalism.

RuPaul

#33. I don't think that fundamentalism has anything to do with Jesus Christ. They call themselves Christians, but if that's Christian, count me out. Fundamentalism is built on fear and greed. They're telling you to give them your money otherwise you're going to hell.

Matthew Fox

#34. Since Khomeini's death, the popular appeal of an Islamic state - and of fundamentalism - has surely dimmed. Thinkers still debate and warriors kill, but no country seems prepared to emulate Iran. Perhaps revolutions happen only under majestic leaders, and no one like Khomeini has since appeared.

Ruhollah Khomeini

#35. If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction.

Peter Kreeft

#36. The white supremacists are really pretty smart. If they can't scare us with the essential inferiority line, they'll wrap it in a miasma of sex, because that's the only thing they know is feared in our fundamentalist hearts down here.

Harper Lee

#37. It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

Michel De Montaigne

#38. Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

Pope Benedict XVI

#39. Erasmus's Bible-saturated mind. His was a mind too broad for fundamentalism, which rejects reason, and too honest for intellectualism, which rejects revelation.

John Mark Reynolds

#40. My statement to Harris that his book contains much to admire is specious hyperbole. In The End of Faith, Harris rails against religious fundamentalism, which seems obvious, as well as against religious moderates, which seems intolerant.

Nick Flynn

#41. Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power.

Salman Rushdie

#42. There is a gap between our love for the gospel and our love for godliness. This must change. It's not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It's the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God.

Kevin DeYoung

#43. We were busy judging everyone's spiritual state. We had a lot to do. Only God might be able to see their hearts and innermost thoughts, but we had a pretty good idea of how it was going to go for plenty of folks on the Judgment Day. Not so well.

Frank Schaeffer

#44. I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.

Bell Hooks

#45. It's rather simple. God deliver us from people who know so little that they will kill for what little they know.

R. Joseph Hoffmann

#46. I find most famous Christians to be full of themselves and of prejudice and self-loathing, masquerading as devout religious belief. I find all fundamentalism to be terrifying and very destructive.

Anne Lamott

#47. In other words, I'm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.

Viggo Mortensen

#48. Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.

Mark Carney

#49. I don't use my money to gain political influence for my private interests, which is what many rich people do, and what, in a sense, market fundamentalism does, because it is in the interests of people who have a lot of money to have as little taxes as possible.

George Soros

#50. Environmentalism is a form of pagan fundamentalism. These green wackos are fanatics like al-Quaida. Just like them.

G. Gordon Liddy

#51. The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism.

Jon Meacham

#52. It is my responsibility to make sure that the fear is overcome ... This attack must instead free our speech about Islamic fundamentalism. We must not be silenced.

Marine Le Pen

#53. Fundamentalism is not bred in poverty. There are plenty of poor countries in the world that don't have violence because amid the poverty there is a kind of justice and in some countries a democracy.

Robert Fisk

#54. Doubt purifies faith. Without doubt, belief calcifies into rigid fundamentalism. Without doubt, there are no questions; and without questions, there is no imagination.

Michael Gungor

#55. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful - but also very harmful to our society.

George Soros

#56. There's nothing in the actual Bible that limits a Christian in their appreciation of or interest in science. Anti-science is purely a function of ignorant fundamentalism.

Moby

#57. If you don't act now, the day is not far, that this beautiful planet of yours, which you call home, shall be turned into a dry barren wasteland by the blood-sucking fundamentalists.

Abhijit Naskar

#58. Fundamentalism is still on the march.

David Brooks

#59. Pure faith in the benevolece of the Divine can also degenerate into destructive forms of religion like othodoxy, fundamentalism, sectarianism, fanaticism, black magic and witchcraft.

Nirmala Srivastava

#60. You know," said Jehangir, breaking the silence, "it's only Muslims who use the term 'innovation' to mean something bad.

Michael Muhammad Knight

#61. We fundamentalists are a pack of mood-loving showoffs. I'm sure the Minor Prophets would have found subject for correction.

Elisabeth Elliot

#62. I would describe fundamentalism as, first of all, a movement led almost invariably by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and who have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.

Jimmy Carter

#63. I am convinced that Christian fundamentalism is a far greater threat to this country than Muslim terrorists could ever be.

Mel White

#64. Priesthood, Imamhood, Pundithood often come hand in hand with tyranny.

Abhijit Naskar

#65. Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.

Mal Peet

#66. In effect, Saudi Arabia legitimizes fundamentalism, religious discrimination, intolerance and the oppression of women. Saudi women not only can't drive, but are also told by some clerics that they mustn't wear seatbelts for fear of showing the outlines of their bodies.

Nicholas Kristof

#67. Both Hindu, as well as Islamic fundamentalism, feed on the poverty of the masses.

Michel Chossudovsky

#68. The news that comes out of Pakistan is always geared toward terrorism and fundamentalism. But when you give people freedom of expression and the freedom to go out and be social and to express themselves, you will see a change. I see that coming about in my country.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

#69. There is an unraveling, a great unraveling that I believe is occurring. Not without its pain, not without its frustration. Perhaps the fundamentalism we see within America right now is in response to these changes. We fear change, and so we cling to what is known.

Terry Tempest Williams

#70. The Christians had an almost miraculous talent for turning wine into water.

Ken MacLeod

#71. I remain optimistic. What we've seen in Europe and the rest of the world is that freedom has a much stronger attraction than radical fundamentalism.

Gijs De Vries

#72. Today's Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism.

Jurgen Habermas

#73. Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.

P. J. O'Rourke

#74. I enjoy being Jewish, but I'm an atheist ... I hate fundamentalism in all its forms. Jews, Catholics, Baptists, I think they are all potty and capable of destroying the world.

Warren Mitchell

#75. What's interesting is the populace movement of fundamentalism is starting to mirror that approach that elite fundamentalism has long had of trying to have influence across the political spectrum.

Jeff Sharlet

#76. Jewish fundamentalism is teaching that Jews can fight with guns and with civil war, against being relocated off the West Bank, and disobey the orders of their government. That is the call to jihad, to several kinds of jihad.

Arthur Hertzberg

#77. One of the reasons why fundamentalists are so aggressive in trying to promote fundamentalism is because deep down they know it's arbitrary. If you're comfortable with your belief you don't need to convince other people to agree with you.

Moby

#78. It is a disturbing aspect of human nature that if there is a place where there are no consequences and where the most grotesque murders are tolerated in the name of a cult claiming to be a faith, a certain type of person will be attracted to it.

Richard Engel

#79. I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist ... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate.

Alejandro Amenabar

#80. When you move to a new environment with cultural and social characteristics different from your own, it is only logical, that you loosen some of the knots of your religious doctrines, to embrace the new and vivid environment as much as you wish to be embraced by the environment.

Abhijit Naskar

#81. It was as though all the most fundamentalist people of all three religions had descended upon the Old City, leaving no room for even simple things like politeness and common courtesy. There was no love in the city of God.

Jared Brock

#82. We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others.

Israel Shahak

#83. Within the last thirty years, the United States under the reign of market fundamentalism has been transformed into a society that is more about forgetting than learning, more about consuming than producing, more about asserting private interests than democratic rights.

Henry A. Giroux

#84. The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the "liberal" rhetoric of "equal time." But mistake it not.

Stephen Jay Gould

#85. Religious fundamentalism, magical thinking and self-delusion, have been justifications for some of the most horrific atrocities in human history.

Bryant McGill

#86. By undercutting fundamentalism and intolerance, education would curtail violence and war. By empowering women, it would curb poverty and the population explosion.

John Brockman

#87. Religious people claim that it's just the fundamentalists of each religion that cause problems. But there's got to be something wrong with the religion itself if those who strictly adhere to its most fundamental principles are violent bigots and sexists.

David G. McAfee

#88. Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art. With

Brian Zahnd

#89. Over the years I realized the damage fundamentalism did to my own spiritual and mental health. I've spend time recovering, studying scripture, sessions with a therapist, twelve step recovery.

Richard Rossi

#90. Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.

Samuel P. Huntington

#91. The entire idea of sin, is based on books of the dead people. It is a sociological invention founded on textual fanaticism.

Abhijit Naskar

#92. I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

J.K. Rowling

#93. This [fundamentalism] is not religion. It is obscenity. These are lies, the criminal use of religious power to misguide people.

Anwar Sadat

#94. Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.

C.J. Sansom

#95. It seems to be almost a law of physics, that the winds of change awaken fear and fundamentalism.

Elizabeth Lesser

#96. There was one thing the experience had taught him. He said he'd learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believed in God, said they were going to kill you - just listen to them.

Terry Hayes

#97. How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

Christopher Hitchens

#98. Religion comes not where reign fundamentalism and authoritarianism.

Abhijit Naskar

#99. I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God - and I hope you'll quote me on that.

Arthur Hertzberg

#100. Palestinian ideology has become a lethal cocktail of radical nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Jack Schwartz