Notable Quotable 354

Dec 06, 2024

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

- Robert A. Heinlein

In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.

- Montesquieu

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

- Virginia Woolf

Historically, the most terrible things war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

- Howard Zinn

Some of the problems commonly engaging the attention of philosophical thought appear to be deprived, not only of all importance, but of any meaning as well; a host of problems arise resting solely upon some ambiguity or upon a confusion of points of view, problems that only exist in fact because they are badly expressed, and that normally should not arise at all. In most cases therefore, it would in itself be sufficient to set these problems forth correctly in order to cause them to disappear, were it not that philosophy has an interest in keeping them alive, since it thrives largely upon ambiguities.

- René Guénon

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All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and destroys itself. It is in vain to say democracy is less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.

It is not true in fact, and nowhere appears in history.

- John Adams

Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth.

- Paul Johnson

If you're running a dictatorship, you don't really have to worry about the welfare or the property rights of the ordinary citizen. Only the people who keep you in power, a very small group, matter.

- Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

The search for [ultimate] reality is the most dangerous of all because it destroys the world in which you live.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj