Category: Thought

Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

Those who would wish to excite and keep awake your jealousy and distrust are your truest friends; while they who speak peace to you when there is no peace — who would lull you into security, and wish you to repose blind confidence in your future governors — are your most dangerous enemies; jealousy and distrust are the guardian angels who watch over liberty — security and confidence are the forerunners of slavery.

It is our hope that the day may soon come when black people will reject federal funds because they have understood that these programs are geared to pacification rather than to genuine solutions. We hope that the rising level of consciousness may bring a rejection of such doles.

This will strike many readers as fantastic, but they might recall that once in India, Gandhi rejected relief food shipments from England precisely because he saw them as tools of pacification.

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V Hamilton, Black Power: the Politics of Liberation (New York: Random House, 1967).

Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly fools? How did you find that they are now wise? . . .

Now answer me, an’t please you: I dare not adjure you in stronger terms, reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil, that enemy to paradise, that enemy to truth: be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five bumpers of the best, while I make an halt at the first part of the sermon; then answer my question.

François Rabelais, Gargantua & Pantagruel (from the “Faithfully Translated” Gustave Doré edition), Book V, author’s prologue. The Doré illustration is of “Messire Oudart.”

This habit of forming opinions, and acting upon them without evidence, is one of the most immoral habits of the mind. . . . As our opinions are the fathers of our actions, to be indifferent about the evidence of our opinions is to be indifferent about the consequences of our actions. But the consequences of our actions are the good and evil of our fellow-creatures. The habit of the neglect of evidence, therefore, is the habit of disregarding the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.

James Mill, The Westminster Review, Vol. 6 (1826), p. 13.

I think this would be a good time for a beer.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States, March 22, 1933.

I avow myself the partisan of truth alone.

William Harvey, “Dedication to Dr. Argent and Other Learned Physicians,” Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (1628).

oratory

noun : the science of discovering and expressing what ought to be said on political affairs, in language adapted to persuade the people.

Definition of Ariston, disciple of Critolaus, as quoted in Quintilian, The Institutes of Oratory (Rev. John Selby Watson, translator, London: Bell & Daldy, 1873), p. 143.

Man comes into the world naked and unarmed, as if nature had destined him for a social creature, and ordained him to live under equitable laws and in peace; as if she had desired that he should be guided by reason rather than be driven by force; therefore did she endow him with understanding, and furnish him with hands, that he might himself contrive what was necessary to his clothing and protection. To those animals to which nature has given vast strength, she has also presented weapons in harmony with their powers; to those that are not thus vigorous, she has given ingenuity, cunning, and singular dexterity in avoiding injury.

William Harvey, De Generatione Animalium (1651).

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t really matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., the conclusion of his “Mountaintop” speech (April 3, 1968).