Category: Thought

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

John Morley (1838–1923), On Compromise (1877).

Some of us are simply a bit bored of hearing people ripping at closed wounds and then crying about their presumed hurt.

Douglas Murray on Piers Morgan Uncensored, discussing reparations for slavery.

Justice? — You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

First words of A Frolic of His Own (1994), William Gaddis’s fourth novel.

Make no mistake: It is socialism which lies at the end of this rainbow and, in this rainbow, the predominating color is the red of federal deficit spending under which a whole new generation of Americans has grown and developed.

Sen. Harry F. Byrd, as quoted in a newspaper’s three-dot column some time in the early 1960s.

Highly esteemed Mrs. Curie,
Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say. But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling. However, I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble, whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism! I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels. Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact. If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.

With most amicable regards to you, Langevin, and Perrin, yours very truly,

[signed] A. Einstein

Albert Einstein, letter to Marie Curie (November 23, 1911).

Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

Aaron Burr, quoted in Burton Stevenson, Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases (1948).

Fortunately for all of us, the Cold War ended not with a bang but with a whimper. It is surprising, however, that its cessation inspired so little elation.

First two sentences from the introduction to Paul Anthony Rahe’s Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville & The Modern Prospect (2009).

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., address to a joint session of Congress (August 12, 1974).

The word “listen” contains the
same letters as the word “silent.”

The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Canto III.