Category: Thought

Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker.

Zoroaster (Zarathustra) Vahishto-Ishti Gatha; Yasna 53, 6.

Si operam medicantis exspectas, oportet vulnus detegas.

If you expect a physician to help you, you must lay bare your wound.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae, c. 524 A.D.), Prose IV, line 1; translation by W.V. Cooper

A righteous government is of all the most to be wished for,
Bearing of blessing and good fortune in the highest.
Guided by the law of Truth, supported by dedication and zeal,
It blossoms into the Best of Order, a Kingdom of Heaven!
To effect this I shall work now and ever more.

Zoroaster, also called Zarathustra and Zartosht, Vohu-Khshathra Gatha; Yasna 51, 1.

Naturally the member of parliament who submits to coercion by his party, contemplates legal coercions of others without repugnance. Politically considered, he is either one of the herd owned by his leader, or else the humble servant owned by the caucus who chose him; and having in so far sacrificed his self-ownership, he does not greatly respect the self-ownership of the ordinary citizen. If some influential body of his constituents urges a new interference, the fact that it will put upon the rest additional restraints, or appropriate further portions of their earnings, serves but little to deter him from giving the vote commanded. Indeed he feels that he has no alternative if he wishes to be returned at the next election. That he is adding another to the multitudinous strands of the network restraining men’s movements, is a matter of indifference. He considers only what he calls “the merits of the case,” and declines to ask what will result from always looking at the immediate and ignoring the remote. Every day he takes some new step towards the socialistic ideal, while refusing to think that he will ever arrive at it; and every day, to preserve his place, he seeks to outbid his political rival in taking such steps. . . . And thus, being the creature of his party and the creature of his constituents, he does not hesitate in making each citizen the creature of the community.

Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology (1898), Part VIII: Industrial Institutions; Chapter XXII, “Socialism.”

There are three words that socialism must erase from the facades of our public buildings — the three words of the republican motto:
Liberty, because socialism is a rule of tyranny and of police.
Equality, because it is a rule of class.
Fraternity, because its policy is that of the class war.

Yves Guyot, Sophismes Socialistes (1908; English translation 1910), Book IX: “Socialism and Democracy,” Chapter X: “The Impotence of Socialism,” conclusion.

Because our spontaneous initiative has been frustrated, too often inadvertently, in earliest childhood we do not tend, customarily, to dare to think competently regarding our potentials. We find it socially easier to go on with our narrow, shortsighted specializations and leave it to others — primarily to the politicians — to find some way of resolving our common dilemmas.

R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969).