Category: Thought

“Wantonly and enormously heavy lies the hand of the national Government upon the masses of the people at present. But the People are sovereign, and not their transient agents in the government; and the signs are now cheering indeed, that they have not forgotten their native word of command, nor that government is instituted for the sole benefit of the governed and governing people, nor that the greatest good of the greatest number is the true aim and guide of Legislation.”

Arthur Latham Perry, 1890, preface to Principles of Political Economy, 1891.

The only people who object to escapism are jailers.

C. S. Lewis, as quoted by Arthur C. Clarke, God, The Universe and Everything Else (1988).

“I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.”

Lafayette, Letter to his father-in-law, the Duc d’Ayan (December 4, 1776).

“I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”

C. S. Lewis, “Equality,” The Spectator, Vol. CLXXI (27 August 1943).

Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, 1878-1886.

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters, Preface, 1942.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146.

“Aid is just a stop-gap. Commerce — entrepreneurial capitalism — takes more people out of poverty than aid. Of course we know that.”

Bono, at Georgetown University, reported by CBS News (see also this at Common Sense)

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.

C. S. Lewis, “Bulverism,” reprinted in God in the Dock (1970).

No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. And why? Simply because the state is always afraid of them. They tell the truth. . . . Consequently, the man who submits to be a philosopher in the pay of the state must also submit to being looked upon by the state as one who has waived his claim to pursue the truth into all its fastnesses. So long as he holds his place, he must acknowledge something still higher than the truth — and that is the state. . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer als Erzieher,” as translated by H. L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Third Edition, 1913), Chapter XII, Education.