Category: Thought

The only people who object to escapism are jailers.

C. S. Lewis, as quoted by Arthur C. Clarke, God, The Universe and Everything Else (1988).

Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.

Lafayette, Letter to friends (1780), published in Memoirs de La Fayette, Vol. II, p. 50.

By far the most important of all the conditions, under which the production of material commodities goes broadly forward, is liberty of action on the part of the individual; because, wherever such liberty is conceded, association and invention and all other needful conditions follow right along by laws of natural sequence.

Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy, 1891.

Among the new arrangements that feeble mortals are invited to make trial of, there is one that is presented to us in terms worthy of attention. Its formula is: Association, voluntary and progressive.

Scientific method consists in applying to those subjects which lie without the range of our immediate experience those same common-sense methods of reasoning which successful men of the world apply in judging of matters which concern their own interests.

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy (1886), chapter III, “Of Scientific Method”

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.

Robinson Jeffers, “Shine, Perishing Republic” (1939).

Cannon, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
Capital, n. The seat of misgovernment.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (two entries)

Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.

Robinson Jeffers, “The Silent Shepherds” (1958).

These associations, or political parties, are actual armies which have been trained to pursue power; their immediate objective is to so increase the number of their adherents as to control an electoral majority. Influential electors are for this purpose promised such or such share in the profits which will follow success, but such promises — generally place or privilege — are redeemable only by a multiplication of ‘places,’ which involves a corresponding increase of national enterprises, whether of war or of peace. It is nothing to a politician that the result is increased charges and heavier drains on the vital energy of the people. The unceasing competition under which they labour, first in their efforts to secure office, and next to maintain their position, compels them to make party interest their sole care, and they are in no position to consider whether this personal and immediate interest is in harmony with the general and permanent good of the nation.

Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1904).

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill” (1926).