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Thought

Albert Jay Nock

Every government that has cheapened its currency has been knavishly false to a trust; so have those which, like ours, use public funds to subsidize large-​scale gambling and swindling.

Albert Jay Nock, as quoted in Robert M. Thornton, editor, Cogitations from Albert Jay Nock (The Nockian Society, 1970).
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Thought

Zora Neale Hurston

I accept this idea of democracy. I am all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea I think that I ought to give the thing a trial. The only thing that keeps me from pitching head long into this thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of the nation. I am crazy about the idea of Democracy. I want to see how it feels. 

Zora Neale Hurston, “Crazy for This Democracy,” Negro Digest (December 1945).
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Thought

Friedrich Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146.
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Thought

Karel Čapek

You can have a revolution wherever you like, except in a government office; even were the world to come to an end, you’d have to destroy the universe first and then government offices.

Karel Čapek, The Absolute at Large (1921).
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Thought

Fernando Pessoa

I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it — without knowing why.

Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935), The Book of Disquiet (1982; posthumous); written (if not exactly published) under the “heteronym” of “Bernardo Soares.”

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Thought

Karel Čapek

There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.

Karel Čapek, The Absolute at Large (1921).