Nothing in the world is better suited to laziness than orthodoxy. If you gag your mouth, stop up your ears and put a blinder over your eyes, you can sleep peacefully.
Jacob Burckhardt was a teacher and reserved, cautious mentor to Friedrich Nietzsche.
I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities — and found no statues of Committees.
If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force. Force is the very weakest and most treacherous of all human implements.
Auberon Herbert, “The Ethics of Dynamite,” The Contemporary Review (Volume 65, 1894), p. 686.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Cleveland Press (March 1, 1921).
In the decline of a State, of whatever nature that State be, two vices will immediately appear and grow: these are Avarice and Fear; and men will more readily accept the imputation of Avarice than of Fear, for Avarice is the less despicable of the two — yet in fact Fear will be by far the greatest passion of the time.
Hilaire Belloc, ”The Decline of a State,” in First and Last (1911).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, A Short History of England (1917).
There’s never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn’t think he was fully justified. That’s a mental trick called rationalizing, and it’s done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.
Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow (1955), Chapter 14.
But is it possible for princes and ministers to be enlightened, when private individuals are not so?
Jean Baptiste Say, A Treatise On Political Economy: or the Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth. Translated from the Fourth Edition of the French by C.R. Prinsep, M.A. With Notes by the Translator (Sixth American Edition).
At some point you’d think you should have to turn in your Victim Card. . . . [L]ike when you go to an Ivy League university, it’s like right then and there: you’ve got to . . . hand in [the card.] You don’t get to be oppressor and oppressed at the same time. That’s just too much.
Dr. Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan’s podcast, talking about Cathy Newman’s infamous interview with him on BBC Channel 4.