“Nothing in the world is better suited to laziness than orthodoxy. If you gag your mouth, stop up your ears and put a blinder over your eyes, you can sleep peacefully.”
Jacob Burckhardt was a teacher and reserved, cautious mentor to Friedrich Nietzsche.
“There are people who are known to be very liberal, yet they never give without scolding or pride or even insolence.”
John Calvin, De Vita Hominis Christiani, 1550.
“There are people who think the natives of Dahomey very barbarous, because, on the accession of a king, they believe it well to sail a little vessel in human blood in order to tell the fortunes of the new monarch. Now the blood of a thousand slaves is enough for the purpose, whilst in our so-called civilized countries, the great powers, for prestige, or power, or revenge, will shed the blood, not of a thousand, but of 10,000, of 500,000, of millions of persons, enough to make bloody the mightiest river of Europe or America. And yet we dare to treat as barbarians the people of Dahomey.”
Frédéric Passy, from a speech promoted widely in its day (late 19th century) by The Peace and Arbitration Society.
“The entire able-bodied population are preparing to massacre one another; though no one, it is true, wants to attack, and everybody protests his love of peace and determination to maintain it, yet the whole world feels that it only requires some unforeseen incident, some unpreventable accident, for the spark to fall in a flash . . . and blow all Europe sky-high.”
Frédéric Passy, February 4, 1895
“It should be up to each bar owner and patron to decide if they want to smoke or not.”
Drew Carey served as initial video host of ReasonTV, helping debut the online freedom-oriented service in 2007.
“If there are still men behind the times whose ideal is force, men like Moltke, who think that war is good in itself as a useful stimulant, without which the world would become sickly, — these men see their numbers decreasing, and are no longer in a majority.”
Frédéric Passy, from a speech promoted widely in its day (late 19th century) by The Peace and Arbitration Society. “Moltke” likely refers to Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, German Field Marshall (1800 – 1891) who, for thirty years, served as chief of staff of the Prussian Army.
“Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;
Oh life, no life, but lively form of death;
Oh world, no world, but mass of public wrongs,
Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.”
Thomas Kyd, “The Spanish Tragedy” (1592)
“One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.”
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“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.”
Lysander Spooner, “Natural Law; or The Science of Justice” (1882)
“The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: ‘To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.’”
Lysander Spooner, “Natural Law; or The Science of Justice” (1882)