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.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (two entries)
Capital, n. The seat of misgovernment.
Science and mathematics
Robinson Jeffers, “The Silent Shepherds” (1958).
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.
Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1904).
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.
Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill” (1926).
Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
The early Thomas Jefferson had a dream: a society of honest yeomen, engaged in agricultural pursuits, without large cities, heavy industry, banks, military pretensions. The early (and the late) Alexander Hamilton wanted industry, banks, cities, and a military force capable of making itself felt in world politics. It is a nice irony that so many of today’s laissez-faire conservatives think that they descend from Hamilton, the proponent of a strong federal government, and that so many liberals believe themselves to be the heirs of the early Jefferson, who wanted little more than a police force and a judiciary.
Gore Vidal, “Homage to Daniel Shays,” The New York Review of Books, August 10, 1972
Plato did not believe any more in his republic than old Homer did in his gods.
Arsène Houssaye, Philosophers and Actresses (1886)
Irving Kristol, “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’ — some reflections on Capitalism and ‘the free society,’” National Affairs, No. 21, Fall 1970.
Our youthful rebels are anything but inarticulate; and though they utter a great deal of nonsense, the import of what they are saying is clear enough. What they are saying is that they dislike — to put it mildly — the liberal, individualist, capitalist civilization that stands ready to receive them as citizens. They are rejecting this offer of citizenship and are declaring their desire to see some other kind of civilization replace it.