Bill O'Reilly Quotes
There is little anyone can do with fanatics. Reasoning with them is a fool's errand. Avoiding them is mandatory.
O'Reilly, Bill. Culture Warrior. Broadway Books, 2006, p. 182.
A slight variant of this quotation was used by U. S. Senator Alan K. Simpson—{621186}.
This is a wonderful quotation which illustrates the polarization which had taken place in America as a result of the slavery issue. Lincoln’s address—which history and most people have adjudged to be such a moderate attempt to find common ground, and which offended many of his constituents because he was compromising and temporizing on the slavery issue—was seen as the radical attacks of a “fanatic”. There is probably no policy that Lincoln or any other President could have followed that would be even marginally acceptable to the slave owners and their economies and the abolitionists and their economies. In the final analysis, slavery was the kind of issue that is not susceptible to compromise. No nation can exist half slave and half free. The Civil War was inevitable unless the South would give up slavery or the North would accept it.
This quotation is often given by those who believe that nothing has really changed regarding the Arabs and non-Islamic Westerners in the last century. While the support of dictators, Israel and support for that democracy, the artificial Western imposed borders, 9-11, or the Iraq war is often cited as the cause of Arab hostility and murderous aggression, as this quotation demonstrates, the problems and attitudes and behaviors existed long before any of these occurred. The borders were not set until after WWI and all the other causes occurred almost 50 years later, Yet there was still the propensity for fanaticism and violence. Sikes actually was one of those who was to determine the Arab borders, making one of the first “suggested” maps of the area for the English.
Many would argue that the situation is the same today, over a hundred years later.
William James O'Reilly Jr. is an American journalist, author, and former television host.
