Category: Thought

Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, which debuted on August 6, 1991, as a publicly available service on the Internet.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book One.

“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”

When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic—for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad.

Mark Twain, Christian Science (1907), Book I, Chapter V.

I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases — viz. they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent. Not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which can only make them be esteemed wise men.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 1, “Start in Life.”

He that diligently seeketh good procureth favour: but he that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him.

Proverbs 11:27, King James Version.

Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 11, “Finds Print of Man’s Foot on the Sand.”

Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.

Proverbs 3:31, King James Version.

The United States constitute a society which moves under the impulse and by the guidance of instinct, rather than according to any premeditated plan; it does know itself. It rejects the tyranny of a past, which is exclusively military in its character, and yet is deeply imbued with the sentiment of order. It has been nurtured in the hatred of the old political systems of Europe; but a feeling of the necessity of self-restraint runs through its veins. It is divided between its instinctive perceptions of the future and its aversion to the past; between its thirst after freedom, and its hunger for social order; between its religious veneration of experience, and its horror of the violence of past ages.

Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners and Politics in the United States Being a Series of Letters on North America (translated from the Third Edition, 1839), p. 333.

The French peasants got rid of their feudal masters, and it was good riddance, but new masters appeared next day. The name of the thing was changed, but the thing itself remained. The same phenomenon would be observed if there were a wholesale slaughter of millionaires in the United States tomorrow, followed by a grand inauguration of Socialism.

H.L. Mencken, Men versus the Man (1911).