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.
People stop thinking when they cease to read.
C. S. Lewis, “Equality,” The Spectator, Vol. CLXXI (27 August 1943).
I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
The objection made to the hedonistic method contains a truth, but includes with it an untruth. For while the proposition that happiness, whether individual or general, is the end of action, is not invalidated by proof that it cannot under either form be estimated by measurement of its components; yet it may be admitted that guidance in the pursuit of happiness by a mere balancing of pleasures and pains, is, if partially practicable throughout a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider range. It is quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate aim of action, and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the immediate aim.
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics, Chapter IX: “Criticisms and Explanations,” §57 (1879).
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
How to defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. Don’t let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.
Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002.
A slave owner is not a man but a master. By denying the humanity of his slaves he also abrogates his own humanity.
Mikhail Bakunin, Man, Society, and Freedom (1871).
To the question—What is representative government good for? our reply is—It is good, especially good, good above all others, for doing the thing which a government should do. It is bad, especially bad, bad above all others, for doing the things which a government should not do.
Herbert Spencer, “Representative Government—What Is It Good For?” in Essays: Scientific, Political & Speculative, Volume III (1891).
Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 A.D.), Meditations, Book VII.
Political fetichism will continue so long as men remain without scientific discipline — so long as they recognize only proximate causes, and never think of the remoter and more general causes by which their special agencies are set in motion.
Herbert Spencer, “Political Fetichism” in The Reader (June 10, 1865) and in Essays: Scientific, Political & Speculative, Volume III (1891).