What chiefly concerns and alarms many of us are the problems arising from religious fanaticism. As long as large numbers of militant enthusiasts are persuaded that they alone have access to the truth, and that the rest of us are infidels, we remain under threat. Lord Acton's famous phrase about power can be used of another danger. Dogma tends to corrupt, and absolute dogma corrupts absolutely.
Anthony StorrWith the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate except Homo sapiens habitually destroys members of his own species.
Anthony StorrThe ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of โadaptation through maladaptationโ which is characteristic of our speciesโฆthe hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.
Anthony StorrHad [Winston Churchill] been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have concluded that we were finished.
Anthony Storr