Category: Thought

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).

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)

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.

Irving Kristol, “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’ — some reflections on Capitalism and ‘the free society,’” National Affairs, No. 21, Fall 1970.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction,” The Common Reader (1925).

An individualist is a man who says: ‘I’ll not run anyone’s life — nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone — nor sacrifice anyone to myself.

Ayn Rand, “Textbook of Americanism” (1946)