Category: Thought

Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.

George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone (2007).

The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.

Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (1958).

The mind celebrates a little triumph whenever it can formulate a truth.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress; Vol. IV, Reason in Art (1906).

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854).

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 83.

It would be different if the government were a team, but in fact they’re a loose confederation of warring tribes.

Sir Ian Whitworth, Permanent Secretary for Health, Yes, Prime Minister, “The Smoke Screen” (S1; E3: Thu, Jan 23, 1986), as performed by John Barron; written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

Behavior is imitated, then abstracted into play, formalized into drama and story, crystallized into myth and codified into religion — and only then criticized in philosophy, and provided, post-hoc, with rational underpinnings.

Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning (1999), p. 78.

There are two parts to good government: one is the actual obedience of citizens to the laws, the other part is the goodness of the laws which they obey.

Aristotle, Politics, 4.8, Benjamin Jowett, trans. (1885).

Ideal: An excuse for murder, tyranny or self-aggrandizement. Any theory that justifies our secret itch.

Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary Concocted by Ali Baba and the Bunch on Rainy Days (1914), p. 73.

No government can stand which is not founded upon justice.

Aristotle, Politics, 7.14, Benjamin Jowett, trans. (1885).