“People will tie in with a fanatic if for no other reason than to break the monotony of their lives.”
Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 176.
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Mark Clifton 23
American writer 1906–1963Related quotes

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.”
As quoted by Ernst Straus in Einstein: A Centenary Volume by A.P. French (1980), p. 32.
Attributed in posthumous publications
Variant: "if you want to be a happy man, you should tie your life to a goal, not to other people and not to things." A quote from Ernst Straus' memoir of Einstein in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives edited by Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana (1982), p. 420 http://books.google.com/books?id=CNuwE3NL1QgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA420#v=onepage&q&f=false

The New Statesman, 22 October 1921 http://books.google.com/books?id=2UEyAQAAMAAJ&q=%22We+welcome+almost+any+break+in+the+monotony+of+things+and+a+man+has+only+to+murder+a+series+of+wives+in+a+new+way+to+become+known+to+millions+of+people+who+have+never+heard+of+Homer%22&pg=PA70#v=onepage

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
Context: The atheist who affects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects reason, plunge themselves alike into inextricable difficulties. The one perverts the sublime and enlightening study of natural philosophy into a deformity of absurdities by not reasoning to the end. The other loses himself in the obscurity of metaphysical theories, and dishonours the Creator, by treating the study of his works with contempt. The one is a half-rational of whom there is some hope, the other a visionary to whom we must be charitable.

James M. McPherson. Abraham Lincoln, (2009) p. 65
2000s

As quoted in A History of National Socialism, Konrad Heiden, A. A. Knopf (1935) p. 100
Other remarks

“The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men.”
The Comic
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)