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).
There is no such consolation to a born coward as a logical reason for not doing what he is afraid to do
Francis Marion Crawford, Marietta: Maid of Venice (1901).
A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate and radical remedies. “If you will but do this, the mischief will be prevented.” “Adopt my plan and the suffering will disappear.” “The corruption will unquestionably be cured by enforcing this measure.” Everywhere one meets with beliefs, expressed or implied, of these kinds. They are all ill-founded. It is possible to remove causes which intensify the evils; it is possible to change the evils from one form into another; and it is possible, and very common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts made to prevent them; but anything like immediate cure is impossible.
Herbert Spencer, “From Freedom to Bondage,” Essays: Scientific, Political & Speculative (1891), and in Thomas Mackay, editor, A Plea for Liberty (1891).
The lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way from one flower to another. But the historian is an entomologist who must be stirring. He must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the net which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon his paper with sharp pins, which are dates.
Francis Marion Crawford, Don Orsino (1891).
Constantly writer after writer would come to me in Hollywood to invite me into Communist activities and I would laugh at them and point out the utter inconsistency of a man making fifteen hundred dollars a week or more, doing next to nothing, going for a philosophy which would destroy just that and put them back where they were when the golden cornucopia splayed them.
Jack Woodford (1894–1971) was a successful American pulp novelist and non-fiction writer of the 1930s and 1940s. He had a brief stint in Hollywood, and wrote about his literary adventures in his 1962 autobiography.
All sentient life is concerned with property, either instinctively or rationally. No organism capable of volitional action can escape the demands arising within it for some kind of property relationship. Survival of all beings capable of consciousness is predicated directly upon some kind of property relationship.
Robert LeFevre, The Philosophy of Ownership (1966), first page.
Having heard all of this you may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.
Anti-slavery politician William Wilberforce (1759-1833), closing a speech in House of Commons (1791), as quoted in Once Blind: The Life of John Newton (2008) by Kay Marshall Strom, p. 225.
So is there no kind of life more wicked than that of mercenary Souldiers, who without any respect had to the equity of the Cause, fight only for plunder and pay.
Hugo Grotius, The Most Excellent Hugo Grotius His Three Books Treating of the Rights of War and Peace (W. Evats, B.D., translators) p. 426.
Gene’s whole vision was that minorities weren’t on set because we were minorities, we were on set because in the future our diverse world would all be working together as equals. I understand that everyone needs to see role models that can inspire them and talk to them and represent them, but I believe we need to move to a future that transcends race, gender, or anything else. We’re all people.
Nichelle Nichols, in “Uhura Fest: ‘Star Trek’ legend Nichelle Nichols talks Wizard World Philly and transcending race,” by Jerome Maida, The Philadelphia Enquirer (May 29, 2017). Ms. Nichols, who died on July 30, 2022, played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on the Star Trek television show and in the first six Star Trek movies.
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
John Adams, Novanglus: or, A History of the Dispute with America, From Its Origin, in 1754, to the Present Time (1775), No. 3, first published in the Boston Gazette.