“It is precisely scientific and medical considerations that carry the least weight in our debates.” – Jean-Francois Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information; 1991; p. 84
“False tragedies serve as an excuse for those who are unable to solve real problems.” – Revel, Flight From Truth, p. 80
“Impotent virtue being a more accessible luxury than active intelligence.” – Revel, p. 84
The truest words ever spoken by a historian: “I observe that at the present day, as in the case of other arts and professions, what is true and really useful is always treated with neglect, while that which is pretentious and showy is praised and coveted as if it were something great and wonderful.” – The Histories of Polybius, 264-146 B.C., p. 407
“When the people are sheep, the government is always a wolf.” – Theodore Parker, The Present Crisis in American Affairs, May 7, 1856
“American folkore teaches us to suspect all who play the political game as professional deficients.” – Eliot Janeway, The Economics of Crisis: War, Politics and the Dollar, 1968; p.53
“The idea that government is the source of power in this country is of foreign origin, and at war with the letter and the spirit of institutions. The moment we admit the principle that no change in government can take place without the permission of the existing authorities, we revert to the worn out theory of Europe; and whether we are the subjects of the czar of Russia, or of the monarch of Great Britain, or of a landed oligarchy, the difference to us is only one of degree; and we have lost the reality, though we may retain the forms, of a democratic republic.” – Thomas Dorr, The People’s Right to Remake Their Constitution, May 3, 1842; Annals Vol. 7, p.56
“I think the demons in Hell would be more ashamed to do to their fellow demons what many of our [politicians] do to their own [constituency].” – Stephen S. Foster, A Brotherhood of Thieves, Annals Vol 7, p.84
“The world is his who can see through it’s pretensions. See it to be a Lie, and you have already dealt it a mortal blow.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar, 1837; Annals, Vol.6, p. 374
“…there is something very discouraging to the political philanthropist in the fact that generations have passed away, one after another, without establishing truths known to many in each generation. A man may leave his property to his successors, but he cannot his information, and the most valuable truths are suffered to die, and are again eternally brought forward as something new when they are really old and ought to have been acted upon, successively, since the first formation of society.” – Gilbert Vale, Happiness for All Through the Diffusion of Wealth, 1841; Annals, Vol. 7, p. 23
“To those who will inquire and reflect, the encouragement of philosophy is as strong as the instinct of patriotism. But the empire of habit and of prejudice [and ignorance] is in strong opposition to the supremacy of thought and reason.” John Taylor,
“Supreme power, which everybody longs to acquire, is indeed hard to manage, and it breeds folly in those that court it, for its nature can be compared with that of prostitutes, who compel people to fall in love with them, but ruin those who indulge in their intercourse.” – Thucydides, Peace 102-3; in The Rise and Fall of States by Jacqueline de Romilly, 1977, p.18
“Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their powers: that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us(!). …the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any of our natural rights.” – Thomas Jefferson letter to Francis Walker Gilbert, June 7, 1816
“It is scarcely possible to reduce the enlightened [educated] mind to civil or ecclesiastical tyranny. Deprive them of knowledge and they sink almost insensibly into vassalage. Ignorance cramps the powers of the mind at the same time it blinds men to all their natural rights.” – Noah Webster, The Union of the United States, 1785
“Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you really want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
