WIST

I suspect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

George Meredith (1828-1909) English novelist and poet
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, ch. 1 (1859)

The miser has lived poor to die rich; and if the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it, still deeper in debt to himself.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) English clergyman, writer
Lacon, 2.131 (1824)

How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) Russian novelist
The Brothers Karamazov, 6.2(f) [Father Zossima] (1880) [tr. Garnett (1912)]

Tragically, the history of the church has been largely a history of believers refusing to trust the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptation he resisted. It’s the history of an institution that has frequently traded its holy mission for what it thought was a good mission. It is the history of an organization that has frequently forsaken the slow, discrete, nonviolent, sacrificial way of transforming the world for the immediate, obvious, practical, and less costly way of improving the world. It is a history of a people who too often identified the kingdom of God with a “Christian” version of the kingdom of the world.

Gregory Boyd (b. 1957) American evangelical pastor, Christian theologian, author.
The Myth of a Christian Nation (2007)

We do not intend that this Republic shall ever fail as those republics of olden times failed, in which there finally came to be a government by classes, which resulted either in the poor plundering the rich or in the rich exploiting and in one form or another enslaving the poor; for either event means the destruction of free institutions and of individual liberty.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Union League Club, Philadelphia (30 Jan 1905)

When a rebel army took over a Korean town, all fled the Zen temple except the abbot. The rebel general burst into the temple, and was incensed to find that the master refused to greet him, let alone receive him as a conqueror.
“Don’t you know,” shouted the general, “that you are looking at one who can run you through without batting an eye?”
“And you,” said the abbot, “are looking at one who can be run through without batting an eye.”
The general’s scowl turned into a smile. He bowed low and left the temple.

Other Authors and Sources
Zen Koan
In Lucien Stryk, Takashi Ikemoto, and Taigan Takayama, Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill (1973)

The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration … can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.

Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900-1965) American politician
Speech, Los Angeles Town Club (11 Sep 1952)

Nationalism appeals to our tribal instincts, to passion and to prejudice, and to our nostalgic desire to be relieved from the strain of individual responsibility which it attempts to replace by a collective or group responsibility.

Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) Austrian-British philosopher
The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2.12.3 (1945)

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny. … It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Sec. 128-129 (1955)

It may be different elsewhere. But a democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Speech, Amherst College (26 Oct 1963)

It was a time when a man with a policy would have been fatal to the country. I have never had a policy; I have simply tried to do what seemed best each day as each day came.

President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) US President (1861-65)
Remark to John M. Palmer
In Emanuel Hertz, ed., Lincoln Talks: A Biography in Anecdote, "Father Abraham" (1939)

I am the President of the most powerful nation in the world. I take orders from nobody, except photographers.

Harry S Truman (1884-1972) US President (1945-1953)
Remark to foreign dignitaries
In David Binder, "George Tames, Photographer, Dies at 75," New York Times (24 Feb 1994)

Money to get power, power to protect money.

Other Authors and Sources
Medici Family Motto (15th C)

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The Sydney Morning Herald (22 May 1982)

To play well the scenes in which we are ‘on’ concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The World’s Last Night (1960)

Sometime over the last week, WIST gained its 10,000th quotation. There’s a count kept in the sidebar, but it’s a bit deceptive because it includes Administrative posts (such as this), of which (prior to this one) there have ben 81. It appears that this Samuel Pepys quote was the official 10,000th.

It’s remarkable how quickly the numbers grow when you plug in five quotes every weekday, 25 a week. Though the numbers don’t always go just upward — I do periodic reviews through the collection, and occasionally come upon duplicates that need to be cleaned up.

It’s taken 24 years (!) to get to this point. At the current load rate, though, it will only take about 15 years further to get to 20,000. Best get a move on, then!

The worst policy is one made in secrecy by the experts.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
In Michael Leapman, Times (London) (17 Jun 1971)

To photograph is to confer importance.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) American essayist, novelist, activist
On Photography, ch. 2 (1977)

Peace is more the product of our day-to-day living than of a spectacular program, intermittently executed.

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) US President (1954-60)
Speech, Columbia University (23 Mar 1950)

Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) American President (1829–1837)
(Attributed)

I believe politics is the finest form of entertainment in the state of Texas: better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball. Becoming a fan of this arcane art form will yield a body endless joy — besides, they make you pay for it whether you pay attention or not.

Molly Ivins (1944-2007) American writer, political columnist [Mary Tyler Ivins]
“Good morning, Fort Worth! Glad to be here,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram (1 Mar 1992)

The Prodigal robs the Heir, the Miser himself.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English writer, physician
Gnomologia, #4722 (1732)

The more a mind receives, the more does it expand.

Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65) Roman statesman, philosopher, playwright [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Moral Letters to Lucilius, 101.10 “On the Approaches to Philosophy” [tr. Gummere (1918)]

To deride patriotism marks impoverished blood, but to extol it as an ideal or an impulse above truth and justice, at the cost of the general interests of humanity, is far worse.

John, Viscount Morley (1838-1923) English politician and writer
Notes on Politics and History, ch. 5 (1913)

The God of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved — cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell. I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed and redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell — in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the lost only increase laughter and double bliss.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer and orator
“The Great Infidels” (1881)
Full text.

The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
“The Loss of the Future,” The Long-Legged House (1969)

The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Strength to Love, 2.3 (1963)

A really new idea affronts current agreement — it wouldn’t be a new idea if it didn’t — and the group, impelled as it is to agreement, is instinctively hostile to that which is divisive.

William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte, Jr. (1917-1999) American sociologist, journalist, and civic planner
The Organization Man, ch. 5 (1956)

There are families in which the father will say to his child, “You’ll get a thick ear if you do that again,” while the mother, her eyes brimming over with tears, will take the child to her arms and murmur lovingly, “Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?” And who would maintain that the second method is less tyrannous than the first?

George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool” (1947)

To be sure, a version of the kingdom of the world that effectively carries out law, order, and justice is indeed closer to God’s will for the kingdom of the world. Decent, moral people should certainly encourage this as much as possible, whatever their religious faith might be. But no version of the kingdom of the world is closer to the kingdom of God than others because it does its job relatively well. For God’s kingdom looks like Jesus, and no amount of sword-wielding, however just it might be, can ever get a person, government, nation, or world closer to that. The kingdom of God is not an ideal version of the kingdom of the world; it’s not something that any version of the kingdom of the world can aspire toward or be measured against. The kingdom of God is a completely distinct, alternative way of doing life.

Gregory Boyd (b. 1957) American evangelical pastor, Christian theologian, author.
The Myth of a Christian Nation (2007)