Daily Inspiration Quote by Finley Peter Dunne

Fanaticism, in Finley Peter Dunne's hands, isn’t loud faith so much as a swaggering certainty dressed up as piety. The punchline is the conditional: “if He knew the facts of the case.” Dunne mocks a particular species of zealot who treats God less as an authority than as a brand ambassador waiting for a briefing memo. The fanatic doesn’t submit to divine will; he drafts it, then claims heavenly backing with the smugness of someone citing sources.

The intent is surgical: to expose how moral absolutism often runs on a profoundly human engine - ego, grievance, and selective information. By imagining the Lord as merely misinformed, Dunne flips the usual hierarchy. The fanatic becomes God’s consultant, correcting the Almighty’s supposed knowledge gap. It’s funny because it’s absurd, and it’s sharp because it’s recognizable: the way people use righteousness as a shortcut past humility, complexity, and doubt.

Context matters. Dunne, a journalist best known for the Mr. Dooley columns, wrote in an America roiled by industrial conflict, machine politics, nativist moral campaigns, and the era’s confident reformers - people certain history (and Providence) had deputized them. His line anticipates the modern phenomenon of “God wants what I want,” where theology is retrofitted to ideology. The subtext is a warning: when someone claims divine certainty while insisting the “facts” are on their side, the argument is already over - and the damage is just beginning.