Category: Thought

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1895.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1895.

There’s no way I can justify my salary level, but I’m learning to live with it.

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943, p. 250.

Americans pass a law against liquor and go right on drinking; they frown, publicly and openly upon the relationship of mistress and lover, and go right on having such relationships under cover. They draw up huge categories of business ethics, and American business is rotten to the core. It’s America’s fetich: this, ‘Save the Surface and You Save All,’ theory.

Jack Woodford, Unmoral, 1934.

The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.

Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943, p. 242.

[T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

José Ortega y Gasset, Chapter XIII: The Greatest Danger, The State, The Revolt of the Masses, 1929.

The biggest victory is one I’m going to have in a couple months. Up till now, I’ve basically been laying the groundwork.

Curly Haugland, as quoted in “The One Man Who Could Stop Donald Trump,” Erick Trickey, Politico, May 9, 2016.

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is ‘mass’ or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself ‘just like everybody,’ and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1929.

We must be severe, not only with ourselves, but with other 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.