“Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously overcompensates a secret doubt.”
More from Aldous Huxley on Psychology
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
“A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.”
“The consistent thinker ... is either a walking mummy or else if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality a fanatical monomaniac.”
“A fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.”
Others on Psychology
Napoleon
5 quotes“There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear.”
Saint Augustine
4 quotes“Often the contempt of vainglory becomes a source of even more vainglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt i...”
Carl Jung
3 quotes“The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.Carl JungSwiss psychologi...”
Thomas Hobbes
3 quotes“I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts.”
Julius Caesar
3 quotes“As a rule what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see.”
Alexandre Dumas
2 quotes“The voice of human nature is nothing but one prolonged cry.”
Edgar Allan Poe
2 quotes“Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.”
Sigmund Freud
2 quotes“The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.”
Edmund Burke
2 quotes“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a st...”
Simone Weil
2 quotes“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
William S. Burroughs
2 quotes“Paranoia is just having the right information.”
Orson Scott Card
2 quotes“Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.”