“Only a year after the collapse of the Third Reich a strangely conclusive piece of evidence can be advanced to support the claim that "fanatical", this key National Socialist term, never really had the sting taken out of it by excessive use. For although scraps of the LTI surface all over the place in contemporary language, "fanatical" has disappeared. From this one can safely conclude that either consciously or subconsciously people remained aware of the real facts of the case all through those twelve years, namely, that a confused state of mind, equally close to sickness and criminality, was for twelve years [of Nazi rule] held to be the greatest virtue.”

— Victor Klemperer , book LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

Source: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich) (1947), p. 61.

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Victor Klemperer 10

Philologist, author of LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii 1881–1960

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk : How We Defeat Ourselves by the Way We Talk and What to do About It (1976), p. 104

“Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"The Substitutes for Religion, The Religion of Sex"
Proper Studies (1927)

“There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

"The California Question" (10 June 1850), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens http://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1850s
Context: There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose ‘corner-stone is slavery.’ But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence.

“To the fanatical believer physical and spiritual suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o'-the-wisp. … I can really never get shot of them, the fanatics. Whether they appear as religious fanatics or vegetarian fanatics makes no odds. They're catastrophic people.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Jonas Sima interview 
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: To the fanatical believer physical and spiritual suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o'-the-wisp. … I can really never get shot of them, the fanatics. Whether they appear as religious fanatics or vegetarian fanatics makes no odds. They're catastrophic people. These types whose whole cast of mind as it were looks beyond mere human beings toward some unknown goal. The terrible thing is the great power they often wield over their fellow human beings. Apart from the fact that I believe they suffer like the very devil, I've no sympathy for them.

“The claim of philosophy to be about the whole can be secured only if the many "ordinary" languages in the whole can be taken over by an act of persuasion into a language about the whole.”

Mark D. Jordan (1953)

Authority and persuasion in philosophy (1985)

“The spirit of our National Socialist idea has to overpower the spirit of liberalism and false democracy if there is to be a third Reich at all! Deeply rooted in organic life, we have realized that the false belief in the equality of man is the deadly threat with which liberalism destroys people and nation, culture and morals. violating the deepest levels of our being! We have to reject with fanatical zeal the frequent lie that people are basically equal and equal in regard to their influence in the state and their share of power! People are unequal, they are unequal from birth, become more unequal in life and are therefore to be valued unequally in their positions in society and in the state!”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

Source: " Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future https://books.google.com/books?id=fG_oAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA87", by Gregor Strasser - (1926 June 15)

“The National Socialist Party in Austria never tried to hide its inclination for a greater Germany. That Austria would one day return to the Reich was a matter of course for all National Socialists and for true Germans in Austria.”

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946) austrian chancellor and politician, convicted of crimes against humanity in Nuremberg Trials and sentenced …

Speech in Berlin, April 7, 1938. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

“The formulation "ways to faith" could be interpreted as implying that faith is a conclusion a person may come to after pondering certain facts about the world-facts about history, nature, or consciousness. If that were the case, one could lead a person to this conclusion by presenting these facts to him and pointing out their implications. I, however, do not regard religious faith as a conclusion. It is rather an evaluative decision that one makes, and, like all evaluations, it does not result from any information one has acquired, but is a commitment to which one binds himself. In other words, faith is not a form of cognition; it is a conative element of consciousness.”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) israeli intellectual

"Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State" (1995)

“But even now, after the greatest victory known to history we cannot for one minute forget the basic fact that our country remains the one socialist state in the world. You will speak frankly about this to the collective farmers…Only the most concrete, most immediate danger, which threatened us from Hitlerite Germany, has disappeared.”

Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946) Soviet politician

August 1945. Quoted in "The Soviet Union Since World War II" - Page 4 - by American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philip Edward Mosely - History - 1949

“In fact, this conclusion is merely a restatement of what was a matter of consensus until a few years ago. This time it is supported by a bundle of evidence, but it had been known all along. It is only recently that politically motivated academics have manufactured doubts concerning this coherent and well-attested tradition. And it is not on the strength of arguments, but exclusively through their grip on the media, that they temporarily managed to create the impression that the Hindu case was built on myth and concoction.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

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Victor Klemperer 10

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