Category: Thought

We are all equal in our capacity for error and suffering.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (Richard Zenith, translator, 2001), p. 211.

When politicians say “I’m in politics,” it may or may not be possible to trust them, but when they say, “I’m in public service,” you know you should flee.

Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.

Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature (1980).

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too.

William Penn, Frames of Government (1682).

The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.

Albert Jay Nock, “On Doing the Right Thing,” The American Mercury (1925).

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

Vladimir Nabokov, published in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. VIII, no. 2, Spring 1967.

It’s nice to elect the right people, but that isn’t the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.

Milton Friedman, c. 1977

An amibitious Roman used to buy and bribe his way through all the inferior magistracies up to the consulship, counting upon getting a province at last out of whichhe could extort enough to recoup himself, pay all his debts, and have a fortune besides. Modern plutocrats buy their way through elections and legislatures, in the confidence of being able to get powers which will recoup them for all the outlay and yield and an ample surplus besides.

I regard plutocracy, however, as the most sordid and debasing form of political energy known to us. In its motive, its processes, its code, and its sanctions it is infinitely corrupting to all the institutions which ought to preserve and protect society. The time to recognize it for what it is, in its spirit and tendency, is when it is in its germ, not when it is full green.

William Graham Sumner, “Democracy and Plutocracy,” in Earth Hunger and Other Essays (1914), pp. 294–295.

Two resolute men, acting in concord, may transform an Empire, but an ordinary resourceful duck can escape from a dissentient rabble.

Ernest Bramah, as quoted by Lin Carter, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, introduction (Ballantine Books, 1974).

Take heed, therefore, wicked prelates, blind leaders of the blind; indurate and obstinate hypocrites, take heed. . . .

William Tyndale, Preface to The Practice of Prelates (1531).