Cowper’s Mahometans ate up the hog while denouncing it as an unclean thing, by judging each piece — as the phrase of the empirical Socialist goes — ‘on its merits.’ So you are being made to swallow Socialism bit by bit.
It is impossible for a government to levy taxes and distribute large amounts of money without by that very process creating large numbers of enemies of its authority and those jealous of its power.
I have heard a socialist ask, “Will collectivism change the soil and the sunshine of Medoc?” No, but wine does not come into existence of its own accord, the vine-stocks and the conditions of soil and of climate do not produce fine harvests spontaneously, but need to be properly utilised, and require an annual expenditure upon the cost of cultivation; and subordinate officials without a direct interest are not the men to apply the required attention to this kind of production.
Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies (1910), Book VII, “Collectivist Organization.”
Every scientific “fulfillment” raises new “questions” and cries out to be surpassed and rendered obsolete. Everyone who wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this.
Max Weber, from a speech (1918) presented at Munich University, published in 1919, and collected in ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf,’ Gessammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (1922), 524–525, as translated by Rodney Livingstone in David Owen (ed.), The Vocation Lectures: Science as a Vocation: Politics as a Vocation (2004), 11.
A trusty companion halves the journey and doubles the courage.
Edward Bulwer Lytton
The entire able-bodied population are preparing to massacre one another; though no one, it is true, wants to attack, and everybody protests his love of peace and determination to maintain it, yet the whole world feels that it only requires some unforeseen incident, some unpreventable accident, for the spark to fall in a flash . . . and blow all Europe sky-high.
Frédéric Passy, February 4, 1895
Man’s concern is not with government; he should look on government as no more than a very secondary thing — we might almost say a very minor thing. His goal is industry, labour and the production of everything needed for his happiness. In a well-ordered state, the government must only be an adjunct of production, an agency charged by the producers, who pay for it, with protecting their persons and their goods while they work. In a well-ordered state, the largest number of persons must work, and the smallest number must govern. The work of perfection would be reached if all the world worked and no one governed.
“Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.”
You have to use deception to a degree. Either you deceive your source or you deceive your audience. The problem with journalism and the reason why it’s in decline is because these ‘leakers,’ these ‘sources’ in government and elsewhere intentionally transmit stuff to the media [who] parrot it to the masses.
James O’Keefe on the nature of modern major network and cable news, and Brian Stelter’s recent confession that CNN doesn’t do investigation, in conversation with Dave Rubin, The Rubin Report, May 3, 2019.
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.