Category: Thought

The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. . . . Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

Herbert Spencer, “What Knowledge is of Most Worth,” The Westminster Review (July 1859) volume CXL

Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation.

Herbert Spencer, “The Evanescence of Evil,” Part 1, Chapter 2 of Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed, (London: John Chapman, 1851).

I renounce the idea sometimes advanced that the state governments ever were or continue to be, sovereign or unlimited. If the people are sovereign, their governments cannot also be sovereign.

John Taylor of Caroline, as quoted in Walter E. Volkomer, ed., The Liberal Tradition in American Thought (G. P. Putnam Sons, 1969)

I don’t need to be hit over the head with the unsubtle political musings of a bunch of 105 IQ actors.

Ben Shapiro, The Ben Shapiro Show, dailywire.com, January 9, 2017

Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority.

Gerry Spence, Give Me Liberty! Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century, 1998

There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment. . . . But I am convinced that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, disturbing speech, is no longer in doubt.

Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate; A Biography of the First Amendment (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

If one awakens in men the idea of freedom then the free men will incessantly go on to free themselves; if, on the contrary, one only educates them, then they will at all times accommodate themselves to circumstances in the most highly educated and elegant manner and degenerate into subservient cringing souls. What are our gifted and educated subjects for the most part? Scornful, smiling slave-owners and themselves slaves.

Max Stirner, “The False Principles of Our Education,” Rheinische Zeitung (1842)

A government of laws and not of men, is a definition of liberty; a government of men and not of laws, of despotism.

John Taylor of Caroline, as quoted in Walter E. Volkomer, ed., The Liberal Tradition in American Thought (G. P. Putnam Sons, 1969)

Today, every president is the target of criticism and mockery. It is inconceivable that even the most caustic critic would be imprisoned for his or her words.

Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate; A Biography of the First Amendment (New York: Basic Books, 2007)