Category: Thought

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.

Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961).

Whether it does any good or not, a law enforced must hurt someone.

ISABEL PATERSON The God of the Machine (1943), p. 92.

“That’s the one thing good about ‘woke’ is that it is fake. Right? The natives are like ‘land back’; and then the white people are like ‘land back’ — right? And the natives are like ‘so we’re gonna get it back?’ and then we’re like ‘not . . . not really. It’s kind of just a thing we say — we do t-shirts.’”

Ben Bankas, comedy bit placed on Facebook.

No government has yet been able to repeal natural laws, though they keep trying.

Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold (1964).

It is our habit to dismiss the Old Testament altogether because Jehovah, or Jahve, does not think or behave like a social worker.

Doris Lessing, Shikasta (1979), p. x.

If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer (1957)

I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage. In Spain, I am sure that the introduction of GPU methods by the Communists did as much harm as their tank men, pilots, and experienced military men did good. The trouble with an all-powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started, there’s no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic. I am afraid that’s what’s happening in Russia.

John Roderigo Dos Passos (author of the U.S.A. trilogy), “Statement of Belief,” Bookman, September 1928.

Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.

Dawn Powell (1896-1965), The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965, edited by Tim Page (1998).

Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams.

The character “Manuel the Redeemer,” in James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Book Four: “Coth at Porutsa,” Ch. XXV: “Last Obligation upon Manuel.” See also Beyond Life: Dizain des Démiurges (1921), pp. 45.

A state is as sound as its thriftiest citizens. A social order is sick when it has to tax its thrifty citizen to provide for its poor. When a social order has no other choice but to so, that social order is doomed.

Whittaker Chambers, “The Anatomy of Fascism,” The American Mercury (April 1944), p. 94.