Category: Thought

Almost all nations and religions, and especially the liberal party in them, think themselves the salt of the earth. They believe that only their special institutions are normal or just, and hope to see them everywhere adopted. They declare that only the scriptures handed down by their own clergy are divinely inspired; that only their native language is clear, convenient, deeply beautiful, and ultimately destined to become universal; that only the logic of their home philosophers is essentially cogent; and that the universal rule of morals, if not continued in tablets preserved in their temple, is concentrated in an insoluble pellet of moral prejudice, like the categorical imperative of Kant, lodged in their breast. Not being content, or not being able, to cultivate their local virtues in peace at home, they fiercely desire to sweep everything foreign from the face of the earth. Is this madness? No: I should say it was only haste, transposing a vital necessity into absurd metaphysical terms. Moral absolutism is the shadow of moral integrity.

George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition at Bay (1931), p. 27.

Knowledge is not like sin. There is no mystical escape from it.

Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow (1955).

If the people at the top think that reaching for a gun will solve the problem, why shouldn’t the people at the bottom think the same?

Michael Moorcock, The Eternal Champion (1970).

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-​bye to the Bill of Rights.

H. L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1920 – 1936), p. 279.

… there, strung out under the cornice of the building, was the motto, which he had never noticed before, of the Federal Communications Agency:

PLANNED FREEDOM IS
THE ROAD TO LASTING PROGRESS.

So simple, so direct, and yet, when you thought about it, almost impossible to understand.

Thomas M. Disch, “The Man Who Had No Idea,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October 1978).

Better to make haste slowly than not at all.

Leigh Brackett’s character Amnir, referencing the ancient motto “Festina lente” (hasten slowly) in The Ginger Star (1974). “Festina Lente” has been the motto of the Barons Dunsany in Ireland, and features on the family’s coat of arms.