Thought

Mark Twain

The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is — a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Chapter 22.

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On December 10, 1884, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published. This novel, narrated in the first person by the title character, is a dark comedy of the antebellum South and slavery, and has been considered by more than one literary critic as the “Great American Novel.”

On this date in 1901, the first Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded — to economist Frédéric Passy (pictured above), co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; and to Henry Dunant the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Passy was an admirer of Richard Cobden and an active member in the French Liberal School of Political Economy that developed in the tradition of J. B. Say, Destutt de Tracy, and Frédéric Bastiat. His published works include Leçons d’économie politique (1860 – 61); La Démocratie et l’Instruction (1864); L’Histoire du Travail (1873); Malthus et sa Doctrine (1868); and La Solidarité du Travail et du Capital (1875).