“Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.”

—  John W. Gardner

"A Nation Is Never Finished", ABA Journal (November 1967), Volume 53, page 1011.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a convicti…" by John W. Gardner?
John W. Gardner photo
John W. Gardner8
American politician 1912–2002

Related quotes

Alan Moore photo

“Way back in the early 80s, when I was first kicking off writing V for Vendetta for the English magazine Warrior, the story was very much a result of me actually sitting down and thinking about what the real extreme poles of politics were. Because it struck me that simple capitalism and communism were not the two poles around which the whole of political thinking revolved. It struck me that two much more representative extremes were to be found in fascism and anarchy.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)

“All Taliban are moderate. There are two things: extremism ["ifraat", or doing something to excess] and conservatism ["tafreet", or doing something insufficiently]. So in that sense, we are all moderates - taking the middle path.”

Mohammed Omar (1959–2013) Founder and former leader of the Taliban

Interview with Mullah Omar - transcript http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1657368.stm, BBC News, 15 November 2001. <br class="br">Moderation

Aldous Huxley photo

“Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Pierre Trudeau photo

“The essential ingredient of politics is timing.”

Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada

As quoted in The Rainmaker : A Passion for Politics (1986) by Keith Davey, p. 57; also in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) by Connie Robertson, p. 439

Marty Feldman photo

“Sex is two plus two making five, rather than four. Sex is the X ingredient that you can't define, and it's that X ingredient between two people that make both a man and a woman good in bed. It's all relative. There are no rules.”

Marty Feldman (1934–1982) British actor and comedian

Interview in Speaking Frankly by Wendy Leigh (London: Muller, 1978).

Elton John photo

“And it's no sacrifice,
Just a simple word.
It's two hearts living
In two separate worlds.
But it's no sacrifice.
No sacrifice.
It's no sacrifice at all.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Sacrifice
Song lyrics, Sleeping with the Past (1989)

Marilyn Ferguson photo

“The business of the Aquarian Conspiracy is calm diagnosis of that illness—to make it clear that synthesis is needed—paradigm change rather than pendulum change.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

“Information practice… consists of two activities that we may call diagnosis and prevention. Diagnosis is identifying what is the most probable information need of a user in a particular state of information want. Provision is deciding what action is most likely to meet that need. Information science seeks to understand the potential range of user situations giving rise to information want and needs; to develop methods of identifying the actual information needed; to understand and expand the range of possible ways of satisfying information need; and to develop methods of deciding what way is most likely to be effective in a particular case.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Meeting the challenge (2009), p. xxii-xxiii; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Alice Hoffman photo

“In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients.”

Alice Hoffman The Story Sisters

Source: The Story Sisters

Zaman Ali photo

“From the day to till the day there are two humans living together they were and they will involves in political process.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

"Humanity", Ch.II "Politics: A Continuous process", Part I

Related topics