Notable Quotable 386

May 16, 2025

A genuinely independent thinking, free mind isn't focused on which political masters it should bow to.

- Larken Rose

I find freedom to be the most important issue facing any human being today, because without freedom, then life is pointless. The more dependent you become on centralized power, the more easily you are lead around.

- Russell Means

If we imagine a technologically advanced Brave New World in which mankind has forgotten his religious heritage and historical tradition—and therefore has no basis for interpreting his own life in moral terms—that would be the end of mankind. It is most unlikely that mankind, deprived of its historical consciousness and religious tradition because they are technologically useless, would be able to live peacefully, satisfied with his achievements. In fact, I would expect the opposite, since it is in the very constitution of humanity that our wants have no definite limits. They can grow indefinitely in an endless spiral of greed.

- Leszek Kołakowski

I have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison of one thought. These people seemed to think it singularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large. The size of this scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance, such as forgiveness or free will. The grandeur or infinity of the secret of its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like telling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he would be glad to hear that the gaol now covered half the county. The warder would have nothing to show the man except more and more long corridors of stone lit by ghastly lights and empty of all that is human. So these expanders of the universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that is divine.

- G.K. Chesterton

Most people end up being conformists; they adapt to prison life. A few become reformers; they fight for better lighting, better ventilation. Hardly anyone becomes a rebel, a revolutionary who breaks down the prison walls. You can only be a revolutionary when you see the prison walls in the first place.

- Anthony de Mello

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It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for it’s own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know). A great many people do now seem think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, your jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.

- C.S. Lewis

When nothing in society deserves respect, we should fashion for ourselves in solitude new silent loyalties.

- Nicólas Gómez Dávila

The world is a great book...they who never stir from home read only a page.

- St. Augustine

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

- G.K. Chesterton

There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.

- J.R.R. Tolkien