Category: Thought

Aucun homme n’a recu de la nature le droit de commander aux autres. La liberté est un présent du ciel, et chaque individu de la meme espèce a le droit d’en jouir aussitòt qu’il jouit de la raison.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

Denis Diderot, L’Encyclopédie (1751-1766), Political Authority, Vol. 1, (1751) as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker.

Grandis, et ut ita dicam pudica oratio neque maculosa
est neque turgida, sed naturali pulchritudine exsurgit.

A noble, and so to say chaste, style is not tainted or turgid, but is dignified by its natural beauty.

Petronius, Satyricon, 2. The consul and satirist Gaius Petronius Arbiter was portrayed by Leo Genn in the 1951 film Quo Vadis — a still from which the above image of the author is derived.

Beware of the man who wants to set things in order. Setting things in order always involves acquiring mastery over others — by tying them hand and foot.

Denis Diderot, as translated by Derek Coleman, in Diderot’s Selected Writings (1966).

No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward.

Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, Chapter XVI: Europe.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Denis Diderot, “Refutation of Helvétius” (written 1773-76, published 1875).

Tel est le malheur de notre siècle, les plus étranges
égarements même ne guérissent pas de l’ennui.

This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.

Marie-Henri Beyle, writing as Stendhal, in Le Rouge et le Noir translated as The Red and the Black (1830), Vol. II, ch. XVII.

This word ‘fascist’ is one of the great words at the moment that stops everyone from thinking. You have only to say that so-and-so’s a fascist and that’s the end of any reason; you can’t think after that. I wish there could be a ban put on the use of the word. It’s an extraordinary psychological thing that if you say there is a possibility of war, the reaction is to lynch you.

Doris Lessing, in Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” New York Times (July 25, 1982).

“Policy” is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs.

David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004).

What the feminists want of me is something they haven’t examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, ‘Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.’ Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I’ve come with great regret to this conclusion.

Doris Lessing, in Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” New York Times (July 25, 1982).

We live in a world of incredible suffering. This brief paradise in the West since the end of the last war, which is about to end, has educated two generations into thinking we live in some sort of Shangri-La. As usual we — that is, the human race — are in for a hard time. But that is our history. When have we not had a hard time?

Doris Lessing, in Lesley Hazelton, “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and ‘Space Fiction,’” New York Times (July 25, 1982).