Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked.
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
Whoever has a principle, must go with it to the extreme, not hold by a middle.
They [zealots] would have everybody be as blind as themselves: to them, to be clear-sighted is libertinism.
Looking back at the worst times [in history], it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in the matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agreed with them.
When I was younger, I could get that white-knuckle grip of holding on to an idea and not wanting to let it go.
By definition, I believe I am unapologetically optimistic and I am unapologetically earnest.
I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
With the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice.
