A Quote by John Avlon

We cannot hope to change human nature. There will always be cranks and conspiracy theorists among us. But we can try to improve things - we don't have to accept the debasement of civil discourse or civic decline. We can take steps to ensure that the lunatic fringe remains on the fringe and stops bleeding into the base and then poisoning the mainstream

John Avlon

Quote Topics

Accept Always Among Base Bleeding Cannot Change Civic Civil Conspiracy Decline Discourse Ensure Fringe Hope Human Human Nature Improve Lunatic Mainstream Nature Poisoning Remains Steps Stops Take Then Theorists Things Try Us We Cannot Will

Quote Author

John Avlon
American - Writer
Born: 1973

You sometimes find something good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The way to find what the mainstream will do tomorrow is to associate with the lunatic fringe today.

Jean Louis

The lunatic fringe is more like a Spanish shawl, where the fringe makes up the entire garment.

Aldous Huxley

One of the things about leadership is that you cannot be a moderate, balanced, thoughtful, careful articulator of policy. You've got to be on the lunatic fringe.

Jack Welch

There is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement.

Theodore Roosevelt

Holocaust denial, once the preserve of fringe conspiracy theorists, has mutated into Holocaust obfuscation, equivocation, and specious comparison on a larger scale than ever.

Ephraim Mirvis

Among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements.

Theodore Roosevelt

I actually feel pretty inspired and hopeful by the fact that protests are becoming the norm now. They're less part of fringe society and more a part of mainstream society. That's exciting. There is no fringe anymore. We should all be included.

Nelly Furtado

I am totally a fringe candidate, and so is Bill Weld: you know, two Republican governors serving in heavily blue states, outspoken, small government guys, outspoken on the social liberal side. We're fringe, totally. We're fringe.

Gary Johnson

And we should keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to concepts on the fringe of science fiction. Flaky American futurologists aren't always wrong. They remind us that a superintelligent machine is the last instrument that humans may ever design - the machine will itself take over in making further steps.

Martin Rees

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.

Doris Lessing

Nature seems to exult in abounding radicality, extremism, anarchy. If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. ... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.

Annie Dillard

The radical is simply being given more room in the mainstream. And I think young people - I'm talking about the very young millennials - they are bored by so much so fast and have such fast big brains, that they won't digest lazy uninteresting work in the way my generation might have. This is a great opportunity for those on the fringe to be less on the fringe perhaps.