Quotes

William Blake, Auguries of innocence, Bushey, 1794

That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror, who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice. But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied: he or his son may renew his appeal, till he recover his right. But the conquered, or their children, have no court, no arbitrator on earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of their ancestors, which was, to have such a legislative over them, as the majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in. If it be objected, This would cause endless trouble; I answer, no more than justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that troubles his neighbour without a cause, is punished for it by the justice of the court he appeals to: and he that appeals to heaven must be sure he has right on his side; and a right too that is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any part of mankind: from whence it is plain, that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of t he conquered.

John Locke, Two treatises of government: in the former, the false principles, and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, and his followers, are detected and overthrown. The latter is an essay concerning the true original, extent, and the end of civil government, London, 1690

Quand tout le monde a tort, tout le monde a raison.

Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée, La gouvernante: comédie nouvelle en cinq actes, en vers, Paris, 1747

Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility–these are the very foundation of any real civilisation, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.

Yehudi Menuhin, Just for Animals, in Victoria Moran (ed.) Compassion: The Ultimate Ethic, New York, 1985, p. 200

There are two ways for Washington to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling proclamations. One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed–provoking new and greater challenges. That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species–not an idle speculation.

Noam Chomsky, Deep Concerns, ZNet, 2003

Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, London : New York, 1921

Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. […] Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: the unity of knowledge, New York, 1999, pp. 302-303

Como todo poseedor de una biblioteca, Aureliano se sabía culpable de no conocerla hasta el fin.

Jorge Luis Borges, Los teólogos, El aleph, Buenos Aires, 1949

A new religion would be an odd sort of a thing without a name: accordingly, there ough to be one for it—at least for the professors of it. Utilitarianism […] would be the most propre.

Jeremy Bentham, The works of Jeremy Bentham, Edinburgh, 1838, p. 390

La guerre était due à l’ambition de quelques hommes criminels et à l’ignorance des masses, dont le faux patriotisme se laisse encore exalter par des chimères politiques.

Camille Flammarion, Dieu dans la nature, Paris, 1867

One of the happiest features of possessing a capacious vocabulary is the opportunity to insult your enemies with impunity. While the madding crowd gets mad with exhausted epithets such as “You rotten pig” and “you dirty bum”, you can acerbate, deprecate, derogate, and excoriate your nemesis with a battalion of laser-precise pejoratives. You can brand him or her a grandiloquent popinjay, venal pettifogger, nefarious miscreant, flagitious recidivist, sententious blatherskite, mawkish ditherer, arrant peculator, irascible misanthrope, hubristic narcissist, feckless sycophant, vituperative virago, vapid yahoo, eructative panjandrum, saturnine misanthrope, antediluvian troglodyte, maudlin poetaster, splenetic termagant, pernicious quidnunc, rancorous anchorite, perfidious mountebank, irascible curmudgeon.

Eugene Ehrlich, The highly selective dictionary for the extraordinarily literate, Pymble, NSW, 2003, p. xxiii

To deny inconvenient opinions a hearing is one way the few have of controlling the many. But as Richard Nixon used to say, “That would be the easy way.” The slyer way is to bombard the public with misinformation. During more than half a century of corruption by the printed word in the form “news”—propaganda disguised as fact—I have yet to read a story favorable to another society’s social and political arrangements. Swedes have free health care, better schools than ours, child day-care center for working mothers… but the Swedes are all drunks who commit suicide (even blonde blue-eyed people must pay for such decadent amenities). Lesson? No national health care, no education, etc., because-as William Bennett will tell you as soon as a TV red light switches on-social democracy, much less socialism, is just plain morally evil. Far better to achieve the good things in life honestly, by inheriting money or winning a lottery. The American way.

Gore Vidal, A Corrupt System, in David Donnelly et al. (ed.) Money and Politics, Boston, 1999

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of the rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find out that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and the maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as the most free and popular.

David Hume and Eugene F. Miller, Essays, moral, political, and literary, Indianapolis, 1742

[William] Godwin saw in government, in law, even in property, and in marriage, only restraints upon liberty and obstacles to progress. Yet Godwin was not, strictly speaking, an anarchist. He transfered the seat of government from thrones and parliament to the reason in the breast of every man. On the power of reason, working freely, to convince all the armed unreason of the world and to subdue all its teeming passion, he rested his boundless confidence in the ‘perfectibility’ of man.

C. H. Herford, The age of Wordsworth, Freeport, N.Y, 1916, pp. 7-8

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Albert Einstein, quoted in Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, London, 1957

El desaprensivo apoyo de Sarmiento a la destrucción de las formas primitivas de comunidad no significaba, sin embargo, como sostienen sus enemigos, una concepción antidemocrática. Podía despreciar a las masas ignaras, pero dedicaba todos sus esfuerzos a educarlas. Su contrapartida era Rosas, quien adulaba a las masas pero cerraba escuelas para mantenerlas en su estado de ignorancia, sumisas y fáciles de manipular.

Juan José Sebreli, Crítica de las ideas políticas argentinas: los orígenes de la crisis, Buenos Aires, 2002, p. 25

The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my convictions. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh entrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old.

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, in J. M. Robson (ed.) The collected works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1963, pp. 259–340, p. 1

Los artistas llamados modernos descubrieron que en la fealdad sin normas estaban a cubierto de críticas. El propósito perseguido no era tan evidente como en quienes buscaban la belleza, y los censores no sabían señalar deficiencias (señalarlas parecía una ingenuidad).

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Descanso de caminantes, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 241

Somos un país en que a los “conservadores” se los llamó “liberales”, a los liberales “radicales” y a los “conservadores populares” (atávicos, caudillescos, demagógicos) “peronistas”.

Ricardo López Murphy and Oscar Félix Salvadores, Razón o demagogia, Buenos Aires, 2002, p. 216

El peronismo es un dilema que nunca ha dejado de intrigar a los observadores, investigadores, académicos extranjeros, por sus obvias, groseras incongruencias ideológicas y también por su habilidad para retener el apoyo de sucesivas coaliciones de sus no menos incongruentes socios o aliados.

Tomás Abraham, El misterio argentino: entrevistas de Pablo E. Chacón, Buenos Aires, 2003, p. 69