Religion — it’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.
Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
The Daily Show
Being ignorant is not so much a Shame, as being unwilling to learn.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Oct 1755)
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Hobbit, ch. 18 “The Return Journey” [Thorin] (1937)
(Source)
Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people’s assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Entry (1955) in “Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook” by Tom Bethell, Harper’s Magazine (July 2005)
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Strength to Love, ch. 10 “Shattered Dreams,” sec. 2 (1963)
(Source)
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) Franco-British writer, historian [Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc]
The Modern Traveller, ch. 6 (1898)
On British imperialism in Africa.
Ideal: An excuse for murder, tyranny, or for self-aggrandizement. Any theory that justifies our secret itch.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
The Roycroft Dictionary (1914)
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 6 (1782)
(Source)
Administrivia: We are experiencing hemispherical difficulties … please stand by …
I realized yesterday that WIST has been “dark” for a week and a half. My apologies — I’ve been on business in Australia and South America, which has been both fascinating and exhausting and otherwise disorienting enough to have broken my daily WIST-posting habit.
We will resume our normal quotational broadcasts on Monday.
My wife should be as much free from suspicion of a crime as she is from a crime itself.
[Meos tam suspicione quam crimine iudico carere oportere.]
Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) Roman general and statesman [Gaius Julius Caesar]
In Suetonius, Life of Caesar
Popularly, "Caesar’s wife must be above reproach" or "beyond reproach."
Caesar was called to be a witness against Clodius, who was charge with having defiled sacred rites and having an affair with Pompeia, Caesar's wife. Caesar said he had investigated and found out nothing to prove the Pompeia's fidelity. When asked why, then, he had divorced her, he gave this answer.
Alt. trans.: "I judge it necessary for my kin to be as free from suspicion as from the charge of wrongdoing."
Alt. trans.: "I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected." [in Plutarch, “Caesar,” Parallel Lives [tr. Dryden (1693)]].
Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) Canadian writer, literary critic, environmental activist
Cat’s Eye, Part 2 (1988)
(Source)
They rejoiced competing with all Hellenes, since oblivion belongs to those who do not take part.
Pindar (c. 522–443 BC) Greek lyric poet
Fourth Isthmian Ode (479 BC)
The better part of happiness is to wish to be what you are.
Desiderius Erasmus (1465-1536) Dutch humanist philosopher and scholar
The Praise of Folly, ch. 10 (1509) [tr. Hudson (1941)]
“The will of the nation” is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, Vol. 1, ch. 4 (1835)
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) Canadian-American novelist and poet
On the Road, Part 2, ch. 4 (1957)
(Source)
There is but one blasphemy, and that is injustice.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
Lecture, Chicago (20 Sep 1880)
Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, #231 [tr. T. Bailey Saunders (1892)]
“Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” he said to himself, and it became a favorite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Hobbit, ch. 12 “Inside Information” (1937)
(Source)
A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Entry (1954) in “Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook” by Tom Bethell, Harper’s Magazine (July 2005)
He that loseth his honesty hath nothing else to lose.
John Lyly (c. 1553-1606) was an English writer [also Lilly or Lylie]
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, “Euphues” (1579)
Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?
[Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?]Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Christian church father, philosopher, saint [b. Aurelius Augustinus]
City of God [De Civitate Dei], Book 4, ch. 4 (4.4) (AD 412-416) [tr. Bettenson (1972)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:
Set justice aside, then, and what are kingdoms but fair thievish purchases?
[tr. Healey (1610)]
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?
[tr. Dods (1871)]
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized brigandage?
[tr. Zema/Walsh (1950)]
And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands?
[tr. Green (Loeb) (1963)]
Justice removed, then, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?
[tr. Dyson (1998)]
Remove justice, then, and what are kingdoms but large gangs of robbers?
[tr. Babcock (2012)]
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
[E.g.]
There is an ideal standard somewhere and only that matters: and I cannot find it. Hence this aimlessness.
T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British officer, diplomat, linguist, memoirist, writer [Thomas Edward Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"]
Letter to Eric Kennington (6 Aug 1934)
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.
[Inde fit ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum
dicat et exacto contentus tempore vita
cedat uti conviva satur, reperire queamus.]Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Satires, Book 1, Satire 1, l. 117 (c. 35 BC)
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the Trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp (30 Jul 1816)
(Source)
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
Robert Wilson Lynd (1879-1949) British writer, literary essayist, journalist, and Irish nationalist
(Attributed)
The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves.
Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) Irish poet, playwright, novelist
The Good-Natur’d Man, ch. 3 (1768)
History is invaluable in increasing our knowledge of human nature because it shows how people may be expected to behave in new situations. Many prominent men and women are completely ordinary in character and only exceptional in their circumstances.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Understanding History, And Other Essays, “How to Read and Understand History” (1957)
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most! — and listens to their testimony.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, playwright, activist
No Name in the Street (1972)
Sex is hardly ever just about sex.
Shirley MacLaine (b. 1934) American actress, dancer, activist, author
(Attributed)
No human being can make another one happy.
W. H. Auden (1907-1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, “Postscript: The Frivolous & the Earnest” (1962)
I told you that “juvenile delinquent” is a contradiction in terms. “Delinquent” means “failing in duty.” But duty is an adult virtue — indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a “juvenile delinquent.” But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents — people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Starship Troopers, ch. 8 [Dubois] (1959)
I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, Vol. 1, ch. 3, part 1 (1835)
Everyone … has a feeling of inferiority. But the feeling of inferiority is not a disease; it is rather a stimulant to health, normal striving and development. It becomes a pathological condition only when the sense of inadequacy overwhelms the individual and, far from stimulating him to useful activity, makes him depressed and incapable of development.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937) Austrian psychologist
The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: A Systematic Presentation in Selections From His Writings, 9.D.2 (1929) [ed. Ansbacher & Ansbacher (1956)]
There can be no rule of God in the present state of iniquitous inequalities in which a few roll in riches and the masses do not get enough to eat.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
In Harijan (1 Jun 1947)
The aggregate happiness of the society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.
George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
Letter to Comte de Moustier (1 Nov 1790)
The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
Letter (19 Apr 1951)
Published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962).
The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American author
Little Foxes, ch. 4 (1865)
Diligence overcomes Difficulties; Sloth makes them.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Nov 1755)
There is no absurdity, however palpable, which cannot be firmly implanted in the minds of all, if only one begins to inculcate it before the early age of six by constantly repeating it to them with an air of great solemnity.
[Es giebt keine Absurdität , die so handgreiflich wäre , daß man sie nicht allen Menden fest in den Kopf regen könnte, wenn man nur schon vor ihrem sechsten Jahre anfienge, sie ihnen einzuprägen, indem manunabläffig und mit feierlichstem Ernst sie ihnen vorsagte.]
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, ch. 26 “Psychological Observations [Psychologische Bemerkungen],” § 344 (1851) [tr. Payne (1974)]
(Source)
(Source (German)). Alternate translations:
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
[tr. Saunders (1851)]
There is no absurdity, however palpable it may be, which may not be fixed in the minds of all men, if it is inculcated before they are six years old by continual and earnest repetition.
[tr. Dircks(1897)]
Ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Table Talk, “On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority” (1822)
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen. […] I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number. […] I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me. […] I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ring-winner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Hobbit, ch. 12 “Inside Information” [Bilbo] (1937)
(Source)
Bilbo's "riddling talk" epithets, given to Smaug in "the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise)."
In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo’s definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Notebook Entry (1954)
In "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell, Harper's Magazine (July 2005)
The inherited churchly institutions in the United States are typically engaged in inducing people to join, support and attend church … in order to worship the church, not to glorify and enjoy God, and in order to enhance some churchly cult, not to esteem and enact the Gospel. The sanction for this appeal is a venerable one — the sale of indulgences. [People] are persuaded that by serving the church, by spending time and money and talent on the church, they can accomplish and exchange for merit and gain a justified status with God.
William Stringfellow (1928-1985) American lay theologian
Imposters of God: Inquiries into Favorite Idols
Money isn’t everything, but it ranks right up there with oxygen.
Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar (1926-2012) American author, salesperson, motivational speaker
(Attributed)
Commonly attributed to Ziglar, but also to Rita Davenport and several other motivational speakers.
Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts.
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) American minister, sociologist, anthropologist.
Folkways, ch. 203 (1907)
With a view to poetry, an impossible thing that is believable is preferable to an unbelievable thing that is possible.
[πρός τε γὰρ τὴν ποίησιν αἱρετώτερον πιθανὸν ἀδύνατον ἢ ἀπίθανον καὶ δυνατόν.]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Poetics [Περὶ ποιητικῆς, De Poetica], ch. 24 / 1461b.11 (c. 335 BC) [tr. Sachs (2006)]
(Source)
Original Greek. Alternate translations:
- "The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities." [tr. Butcher (1895)]
- "A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility." [tr. Bywater (1909)]
- "You should prefer a plausible impossibility to an unconvincing possibility." [tr. Margoliouth (1911)]
- "For poetic effect a convincing impossibility is preferable to that which is unconvincing though possible." [tr. Fyfe (1932)]
- "Probable impossibilities are preferable to implausible possibilities." [tr. Halliwell (1986)]
- "In relation to the needs of the composition, a believable impossibility is preferable to an unbelievable possibility." [tr. Janko (1987)]
- "With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible."
- "For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility."
Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.
[Que l’un combatte pour son drapeau, et que l’autre combatte pour son idéal, et qu’ils s’imaginent tous les deux combattre pour la patrie; la lutte sera colossale.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Les Misérables, Vol. 5 “Jean Valjean,” Book 1 “The War Between Four Walls,” ch. 21 “The Heroes” (1862) [tr. Wilbour]
No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to John Tyler (28 Jun 1804)
(Source)
If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Reflections on the Psalms, ch. 3 “The Cursings” (1958)
Full text.
The present, as historians well know, re-creates the past. This is partly because, once we know how things have come out, we tend to rewrite the past in terms of historical inevitability.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) American historian, author, social critic
“The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus (Spring 1971)
I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this — which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never — the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, playwright, activist
“Letter from a Region of My Mind,” The New Yorker (17 Nov 1962)
Republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The Fire Next Time (1963)
What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique (“a great task that occurs once in two thousand years”), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S.S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German Army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the S.S. élite with academic degrees. Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, ch. 6 (1963)
An act of injustice is condemned, not because the law is broken, but because a person has been hurt.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) Polish-American rabbi, theologian, philosopher
The Prophets, ch. 11 (1962)
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Foreward (1946) to Brave New World (1932)
A strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures, even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against them. This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic — envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the back-biter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life — their standard is quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“A Christmas Sermon” (2), Across the Plains, ch. 12 (1880)
(Source)
