Category: Thought

We must — it is absolutely necessary — seek for law, or general leading principles, in politics. Until that is done there can be nothing rightly done; and the first great law that we have to seek out is the law that determines the right of men to exercise power over each other. Have men any right to this power? If they have it, do they possess it for all matters? If not for all matters, for what matters? And in this last case how are we to tell what these matters are?

Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885).

Toutes les fois que je donne une place
vacante, je fais cent mécontents et un ingrat.

Every time that I fill a high office, I create a hundred discontented men and an ingrate.

Louis XIV, as quoted in Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), ch.26.

“Neocons” is really just a polite euphemism for “bloodthirsty, sociopathic warmongers.”

Glenn Greenwald, System Update, June 19, 2023.

If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.’ In this country I’ve been told, ‘That’s offensive,’ as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me they don’t.

If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force. Force is the very weakest and most treacherous of all human implements. The history of force is the history of the continuous crumbling away of every institution that has rested upon it.

Auberon Herbert, The Ethics of Dynamite (1894).

The wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big, for he knows that, there is no limit to dimensions.

Zhuangzi, or Master Zhuang, often known in the west as Chuang Tzu, in 莊子/秋水.

Recently we have been reversing our traditions; but it is not yet too late to step back from the mire and the slough that lie in front of us. As yet we have only soiled our ankles, where other nations have waded deep. We inherit splendid traditions of voluntaryism, which hardly any other nation has inherited; and it is to voluntaryism, the inspiring genius of the English character, that we must look in the future, as we did in the past, for escape from all difficulties.

Auberon Herbert, The Ethics of Dynamite (1894).

It is the story-teller’s task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

Graham Greene, upon receiving the Shakespeare Prize awarded by the University of Hamburg, Germany (1969).

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954).

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, no. 445/53 (January 18, 1917).