Notable Quotable 58

Feb 24, 2023

Therefore, the very idea of a lawmaking government — a government that is to make laws of its own invention — is necessarily in inevitable and direct conflict with “our liberty.” In fact, the only, sole, and only real purpose of any lawmaking government whatever is to take from some one or more persons their “liberty.” Consequently the only way in which all men can preserve their “liberty,” is not to have any lawmaking government at all.

Lysander Spooner, “A Letter to Grover Cleveland” (Extracts from a pamphlet published in 1864–titled: “Considerations For Bankers”

….It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body.

-Saint Athanasius

The Lord, before His Incarnation, let mankind experience all the bitterness of sin, all their powerlessness to eradicate it; and when all longed for a Deliverer, then He appeared, the most wise, all-powerful Physician and Helper. When men hungered and thirsted after righteousness, as it grew weaker, then the everlasting righteousness came.

He by whom all things were made was made one of all things. The Son of God by the Father without a mother became the Son of man by a mother without a father. The Word Who is God before all time became flesh at the appointed time. The maker of the sun was made under the sun. He Who fills the world lays in a manger, great in the form of God but tiny in the form of a servant; this was in such a way that neither was His greatness diminished by His tininess, nor was His tininess overcome by His greatness.

-Saint Augustine

Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.

- Heraclitus

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

- Gore Vidal

This is the only way in which any meaningful social change can ever take place; it will either arise within each individual, or it will not occur at all…Those who insist upon change coming from above, as something to be imposed upon mankind by institutional authorities, have given up on people. They have lost their confidence in the life processes that exhibit themselves only within individuals…It is now time to give people a chance to bring order to the world by bringing themselves to order.

- Butler Shaffer , Boundaries of Order: Private Property as a Social System

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

- Edward Bernays, Propaganda

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts, but not for meaning or mystery. It produces 'nice' people, not heroes.

- Peter Kreeft

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

- Carl Sagan

The moment an individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the last moment of his earthly life, weighs infinity more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities.

- Julius Evola