{"quotes":[{"text":"Extremism stifles true progression in all fields of human advancement; it is a detriment to everything but war, tribalism and the personal power of Nietzschean entities, striving only for the narcissistic vindication of their ego and will. The enlightened mind knows that all is challengeable, ergo questions all and thus, learns and grows; progression. The weak and narrow mind makes its beliefs sacrosanct; fearful of challenge, their creed becomes unalterable, defended with violence. Political extremists, much like religious zealots, are the latter. They destroy what they cannot convert. They annihilate those they cannot control, or force to conform. They have found no peace in life, no love, and so promote war and division, as emotional cripples – inflicting their own pain and misery and malignant stupidity on the world. Their language binds people together, but only by stirring the darkest excesses of the soul; language of hate, and intolerance, fear and conspiracy, and the need for vengeance. In war-scarred Europe, these cripples direct mass-psychology, and would make the world in their own likeness; mutilated by violence and tribalism and hate.","author":"Daniel S. Fletcher","tags":["advancement","extremism","jackboot","jackboot-britain","lies","manipulation","manipulation-of-facts","political-extremism","political-language","progression","propaganda","sacrosanct","social-indoctrination","terrorism","tribalism","zealotry","zealots"],"id":17135,"author_id":"Daniel+S.+Fletcher"},{"text":"You know,” said Jehangir, breaking the silence, “it's only Muslims who use the term 'innovation' to mean something bad.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["bidah","extremism","fundamentalism","islam","religion"],"id":21201,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.","author":"Richard Dawkins","tags":["extremism","religion","religious-extremism"],"id":34589,"author_id":"Richard+Dawkins"},{"text":"We know Jesus taught that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to the left. We know that Mohammed was sacked from his village and stoned at Ta'if, but he quietly left for Medina.If both of these men, beaten, and bloodied—the incarnations of their respective faiths—asked God to forgive their aggressors, then who were today's religious leaders to advocate holy war?","author":"Eliza Griswold","tags":["christianity","coexistence","extremism","islam"],"id":39822,"author_id":"Eliza+Griswold"},{"text":"I had no knowledge of divine help, and all the world lost faith in gradual progress.","author":"Joy Davidman","tags":["extremism","humanism","partisanship"],"id":48896,"author_id":"Joy+Davidman"},{"text":"They' hate us because they feel--and 'they' are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on.  We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to.","author":"Bill Maher","tags":["charity","extremism","hate","ignorance","irresponsible","passive-aggressive","poverty","poverty-and-politics","suffering","third-world","violence"],"id":49018,"author_id":"Bill+Maher"},{"text":"Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.","author":"Dwight D. Eisenhower","tags":["conservatism","conservatives","democrats","extremism","liberalism","liberals","politics","republicans"],"id":73025,"author_id":"Dwight+D.+Eisenhower"},{"text":"But what is it that drives haters crazy with rage? Many times, it's being ignored. To a person with pride, being ignored is often worse than out-and-out hate; it's that much more of an insult, that you're not even worth noticing.","author":"Bill Maher","tags":["extremism","hate","ignorance","insulting","politics","pride"],"id":78501,"author_id":"Bill+Maher"},{"text":"Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying. ","author":"Salman Rushdie","tags":["extremism","islam","terrorism","zealotry"],"id":87041,"author_id":"Salman+Rushdie"},{"text":"A mature heart for Christ would much rather spend its time praising him than condemning his fanatics.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["acceptance","apologetics","christ","christian","christianity","condemnation","discernment","extremism","fanatics","followers","fundamentalism","god","grace","heart","immature","insult","jesus","jesus-freak","judgment","love","mature","mercy","peace","praise","religion","spiritual","worship"],"id":105106,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":61,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}