Category: Thought

Even in the darkest and crassest times liberty trembles in the lines of poets and affirms itself in the pages of thinkers and burns, solitary and magnificent, in some men who cannot be assimilated by the world around them.

Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, 1938 (1941, Eng. translation).

A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.

John Cleese, from an interview with The A. V. Club (2008).

Idiot, n.

A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

Mayonnaise, n.

One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.

Once, adj.

Enough.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

We must be severe, not only with ourselves, but with others also; exigent, not only with ourselves, but with others also; and so, on the contrary, benevolent not only towards others, but also toward ourselves; compassionate, not only toward others, but also towards this instrument of labour that we carry about with us and of which we sometimes demand too much; that is, our empirical individuality. Reality is neither democratic nor aristocratic, but both together; it abhors the privilege of some over others as much as that equality, according to which each one must have the same value as the other at every moment.

Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic, trans. Douglas Ainslie (1913, 1967), p. 429.

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

Ambrose Bierce, from The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.

John Cleese, From The Human Face, BBC Television (2001).

Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.

The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), 6.43.

A prophet such as we could use again today, strong, zealous, angry and gloomy in opposition to the leaders, the masses, indeed the whole world.

Felix Mendelssohn, referring to Elijah (from the Book of Kings), to his pastor Julius Schubring, 1846, regarding the composer’s Elijah published that year.

The way in which man approaches his failure determines what he will become.

Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (1951), Ralph Mannheim, translator.

And do you agree with me, that the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect towards what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it, and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own rushlight burn more brightly?

Felix Mendelssohn, in a letter to to Wilhelm Taubert, August 27, 1831, cited from Reisebriefe von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1832 (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1862) p. 256; translation from Emil Naumann (trans. F. Praeger) The History of Music (London: Cassell, 1886) vol. 2, p. 1052-53.