Category: Thought

It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.

Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale (1915).

We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (1973), Part I: The Prison Industry, Ch. 8 “The Law as a Child.”

A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.

Stanisław Lem, Podroze miedzygwiezdne, trip 3.

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900).

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel lecture (1970), as quoted in TIME (February 25, 1974).

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900).

’Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor;
And the first wisdom, to be fool no more.

Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace (1733–1738).

We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion.

William Hazlitt, ”On Court-Influence,” in Political Essays: with Sketches of Public Characters (1819).

Never gallop Pegasus to death.

Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace (1733–1738), Epistle I, Book I, line 14.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

William Hazlitt, from ”The Times Newspaper,” in Political Essays (1819).