Category: Thought

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
 Between the crosses, row on row,
 That mark our place; and in the sky
 The larks, still bravely singing, fly
 Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
 We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
 Loved and were loved, and now we lie
 In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
 To you from failing hands we throw
 The torch; be yours to hold it high.
 If ye break faith with us who die
 We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
 In Flanders fields.

Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

Herbert Spencer, First Principles (1862): Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science.

Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.

Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, §2 (1765).

If mind is common to us, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (c. 121-180 A.D.), Book IV, 4 (A.S.L. Farquharson, translator).

When men hire themselves to shoot other men to order, asking nothing of the justice of their cause, I don’t care whether they are shot themselves.

Herbert Spencer, “Patriotism,” Facts and Comments (1902) — commenting on Britain’s “second war in Afghanistan” (1878-1880).

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all — liberty!

The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.