Notable Quotable 334

Oct 21, 2024

Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate…Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

- H. L. Mencken

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security... And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

- Historian Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

- P.J. O’Rourke

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

- Henry David Thoreau

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

- Galileo Galilei

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Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

- Andrew Carnegie

Technology does not fulfill man's perennial dreams, but craftily mimics them.

- Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Through beauty, art cleans the world of our self-obsession.

- Roger Scruton

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

- Henry David Thoreau

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.

- J. R. R. Tolkien