The foremost, or indeed the sole, condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), as quoted in Robert Nisbet, The New Despotism (1976).
In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.
Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven, Lucifer’s Hammer (1985).
Life is the true mystery, not because impenetrable by thought, but because thought penetrates it to the infinite with power equal to its own.
Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic (1913; 1967), Douglas Ainslie, trans., p. 590.
They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.
Ben Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries (1641).
The fact is: almost everything is funny. You just have to have a way of looking at it.
It is the logic of our times,
Cecil Day-Lewis, Where are the War Poets? (1943).
No subject for immortal verse —
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Il faut toujours en fait de nouvelles attendre
le sacrement de la confirmation.
When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
François-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire, Letter to Charles-Augustin Ferriol, comte d’Argental (August, 28, 1760).
If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.
Letter to Adlai Stevenson (November 5, 1959), quoted in The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer : A Biography(1984), by Jackson J. Benson, p. 876.
La superstition met le monde entier en flammes;
la philosophie les éteint.
Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.
François-Marie Arouet, aka Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique (1822), “Superstition.”
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
Interview with Robert van Gelder (April 1947), as quoted in John Steinbeck : A Biography (1994) by Jay Parini.