There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.
I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. - Thomas Jefferson
Nothing—not even the US Army—more threatens the future of a democratic, pluralistic and (dare we wish, secular) Iraq than the political ascendancy of Islamic fascists like Al Sadr. - Marc Cooper
To gain the spiritual ascendancy over ourselves, and the influences with which we are surrounded, through a rigid course of self-discipline, is our first consideration, it is our first labor, before we can pave the way for our children to grow up without sin unto salvation. - Brigham Young