+

"In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy." Simone Weil   "Politicians, one immediately feels, ought to be high-minded and committed to policies; they ought to 'talk sense' to voters rather than rely on empty slogans, selfish appeals, and political payoffs; elective officials ought to vote and act on the basis of conscience rather than at the dictate of party 'bosses.' But the choice is not a simple one. An amateur politics of principle may make the attainment of the certain highly-valued ends difficult or impossible, whereas politics of interest may, under certain circumstances, enable those ends to be realized much more easily. Institutions should be judged by the ends they serve, not by the motives of their members, and on this basis it is an open question whether the professional politician is not the person best equipped to operate a democratic government in a way that will produce desirable policies." James Quinn Wilson   "Jefferson's draft of the Declaration included a long condemnation of George III for his support of the slave trade. 'He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.' Here is a recognition, on Jefferson's part, that the slave trade violated the 'most sacred rights of life and liberty.' And, Jefferson continued, the king was 'determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold.' In his draft of the Declaration, Jefferson applied the term men to slaves at the same time he affirmed that all men are created equal, and he asserted that the natural rights that provided the basis for the Declaration also applied to slaves." James Fishkin   "Evangelical clergy warned that the fate of the Revolution turned upon the renunciation of collective sins like slavery. When listing the vices threatening the American people in 1774, the Reverend Ebenezer Baldwin of Connecticut placed the enslavement of Africans at the top of his 'dreadful catalogue.' 'Would we enjoy liberty?' asked the Reverend Nathaniel Niles. 'Then we must grant it to others,' he pronounced in 1774. 'For shame, let us either cease to enslave our fellow-men, or else let us cease to complain of those who would enslave us.'" Christopher Leslie Brown   "Her identification with Jo was already deep and personal; her fans' assumption that the only possible happy ending for a heroine was marriage not only offended Alcott's firm belief in female equality but also seemed to imply that Alcott's own happiness as an unmarried writer was less authentic and complete than if she had found a husband. At the same time that she basked in her readers' adulation, she fulminated at their shallowness. 'Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman's life,' she groused. 'I won't marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone.'" John Matteson   "The ability to be fair and charitable to views that one really dislikes or that threaten things you really care about takes patience and courage. The ability to be fair, to give credit where credit is due, and to learn from uncongenial or threatening views takes courageous humility and honesty. So: fairness, charity, patience, courage, humility, and honesty. These are not technical skills; they are moral virtues. And if we academics do not teach them—and model them—to students, then we can expect intemperance, arrogance, ideological deafness, distortion, and defamation. It is my view that university teachers cannot help but promote intellectual virtue or vice, and that we have a civic duty to promote the former. But in over 30 years of teaching in universities I have never once heard a colleague own such responsibility." Nigel Biggar   "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens." George Washington   "People who lack the capacity to earn a decent living need to be helped, but they will not be helped by minimum wage laws, trade-union pressures or other devices which seek to compel employers to pay them more than their work is worth. The more likely outcome of such regulations is that the intended beneficiaries are not employed at all." James Tobin   "Three years after finishing their studies, three-quarters of French university graduates are living on their own; by contrast, three-quarters of their contemporaries without university degrees still live with their parents. And they're dying early. In January 2016, the national statistical institute Insée announced that life expectancy had fallen for both sexes in France for the first time since World War II, and it's the native French working class that is likely driving the decline. In fact, the French outsiders are looking a lot like the poor Americans Charles Murray described in Coming Apart, failing not just in income and longevity but also in family formation, mental health, and education. Their political alienation is striking. Fewer than 2 percent of legislators in France's National Assembly today come from the working class, as opposed to 20 percent just after World War II." Christopher Caldwell   "Words ruin one's thoughts, paper makes them ridiculous, and even while one is still glad to get something ruined and something ridiculous down on paper, one's memory manages to lose hold of even this ruined and ridiculous something. Paper can turn an enormity into a triviality, an absurdity. If you look at it this way, then whatever appears in the world, by way of the spiritual world so to speak, is always a ruined thing, a ridiculous thing, which means that everything in this world is ridiculous and ruined. Words were made to demean thought, I would even go so far as to state that words exist in order to abolish thought, and one day they will succeed one hundred percent in so doing." Thomas Bernhard   "Kierkegaard, in 'Either/Or,' makes fun of the 'busy man' for whom busyness is a way of avoiding an honest self-reckoning. You might wake up in the middle of the night and realize that you're lonely in your marriage, or that you need to think about what your level of consumption is doing to the planet, but the next day you have a million little things to do, and the day after that you have another million things. As long as there's no end of little things, you never have to stop and confront the bigger questions. Writing or reading an essay isn't the only way to stop and ask yourself who you really are and what your life might mean, but it is one good way. And if you consider how laughably unbusy Kierkegaard's Copenhagen was, compared with our own age, those subjective tweets and hasty blog posts don't seem so essayistic. They seem more like means of avoiding what a real essay might force on us. We spend our days reading, on screens, stuff we'd never bother reading in a printed book, and bitch about how busy we are." Jonathan Franzen   "French elites came to see a nation not simply as a natural community, but as a spiritual one, bound together by shared values, shared laws, and by a host of what we would now call shared cultural practices, including the same language. And they therefore came to the surprising and politically potent conclusion that France itself was not, in fact, a nation. The abbé Sieyès, known for his uncompromising assertion of national sovereignty in the year 1789, also spoke, in the same year, of the need to make 'all the parts of France into a single body, and all the peoples who divide it into a single Nation.' An anonymous journalist commented at the same time, even more strikingly, 'the French perceive quite well that they are not a nation; they want to become one.' After 1789, the leading French revolutionaries nearly all embraced this view of things, and set forth as a principal goal of the Revolution the construction of a nation: the transformation of the many different peoples of France into a single nation united by common values, common practices and a common language (for in 1789, what is today called standard French was still spoken as a first language by a relatively small minority of the population)." David Bell   "We are going to set off in fourteen columns to ravage the departments of Deux-Sèvres and Vendée. We shall go in with iron and fire, a rifle in one hand and a torch in the other. Men and women, all will be put to the sword. All must perish, all except little children. These departments must serve as an example to others that might wish to rise in rebellion. We have already scorched seven leagues of the country." François-Xavier Joliclerc   "The principle of terrorism is that one must kill. And even if one is resigned to that, it remains, as it was for Albert Memmi who agreed with the Algerians' struggle, inexcusable after an explosion to see mutilated bodies or a child's severed head. But if one can admit it, then we must in fact recognize that the Munich attack succeeded perfectly. It took place amidst an international sporting event that attracted hundreds of journalists from all countries; for this reason it assumed world importance, and, thereby, put the Palestinian question before the whole world more tragically than at the UN where the Palestinians are not represented." Jean-Paul Sartre   "You cannot argue with your neighbor, except on the admission for the moment that he is as wise as you, although you may by no means believe it. In the same way, you cannot deal with him, where both are free to choose, except on the footing of equal treatment, and the same rules for both. The ever-growing value set upon peace and the social relations tends to give the law of social being the appearance of the law of all being. But it seems to me clear that the ultima ratio, not only regum, but of private persons, is force, and that at the bottom of all private relations, however tempered by sympathy and all the social feelings, is a justifiable self-preference. If a man is on a plank in the deep sea that will only float one, and a stranger lays hold of it, he will thrust him off if he can. When the state finds itself in a similar position, it does the same thing." Oliver Wendell Holmes   "The serried rows of white headstones in lovingly-tended Commonwealth war cemeteries stand as silent testament to the price this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe. Can we be so sure peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash to make that assumption." David Cameron   "House prices and rents in the UK are among the highest in the world, both in absolute terms and relative to income levels. The reason is that the UK has some of the most extreme planning restrictions in the world, which has led to Britain having lower levels of housing construction than any comparable country for over three decades. The relationship between planning restrictions and housing costs is very well established empirically, it is one of the few subjects where virtually all economists who have ever done any research on broadly agree. For the British case, the best estimate that I've seen suggests that 35% of the average house price is directly attributable to the planning system. That is the 'planning premium,' if you like, the share of the price that is purely politically induced, rather than due to scarcity of land or anything else. That, I should add, is a very cautious and conservative estimate, and it is much more than that in London and the Southeast, which is where most people want to live." Kristian Niemietz   "Suppose that each limb were disposed to think that it would be able to grow strong by taking over to itself its neighbour's strength; necessarily the whole body would weaken and die. In the same way, if each one of us were to snatch for himself the advantages other men have and take what he could for his own profit, then necessarily fellowship and community among men would be overthrown." Marcus Tullius Cicero   "Ancient Greek moral philosophers all agreed that civilized human beings seek eudaimonia, often translated as happiness. But they meant something different by eudaimonia from what we mean by happiness. Thus Aristotle held that a child could not have eudaimonia; only an adult could. We say that a parent who stays in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the children is sacrificing their happiness; but for Aristotle, eudaimonia was not a state of mind or a feeling; you had eudaimonia if you were the best you could be; thus, for him a soldier fighting and dying bravely on the battlefield was attaining eudaimonia, not losing their chance of finding happiness. For Aristotle, eudaimonia was an achievement—the achievement, for example, of an athlete who beats their previous best time, or a mathematician who comes up with a new proof. Realizing our potential gives us a good feeling; but it is the achievement that counts, not the feeling, and you could not call someone who had a misplaced sense of their own abilities and attainments 'happy' any more than you could admire a cook who kept burning the cakes—even if they had a great time mucking about in the kitchen. For Hobbes, on the other hand, no one can be a judge of someone else's happiness; happiness is the purely subjective condition of getting what you, at this moment, want." David Wootton   "The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community." Lyndon Johnson   "This thoroughly east-facing power was, by the normal standards of European statehood—history, social structures, religion, geography—a different country from the Rhineland, Swabia or Bavaria. It defeated them all in 1866, laying the ground for the 'unification' of 1871. The Prussian empire (for that is what it was) could now enlist the wealth, industry and manpower of Germany in pursuit of its ancient goal: hegemony over north-eastern Europe. By 1887, the future imperial chancellor Bernhard von Bülow was already musing on how to destroy Russia 'for a generation,' cleanse Prussia of its Poles, set up a puppet Ukrainian state and take the Prussian armies to the banks of the Volga. This is the bloody Prussian—not German—thread that leads directly to the Nazi onslaught of 1941." James Hawes   "Overwhelmingly, national churches tended to champion the patriotic cause in case of a threat or conflict. Indeed, they often kept the national spirit alive even when the state itself was destroyed and the country was occupied by a foreign invader. The lower clergy in particular, closer to the people in their way of life and sentiments, often assuming leadership positions at the local level, and free from considerations of high politics, tended to be staunchly patriotic. Rather than conflicting with the national idea, religion was one of its strongest pillars." Azar Gat   "Refined tastes, manners, habits of life are a useful evidence of gentility, because good breeding requires time, application and expense, and can therefore not be compassed by those whose time and energy are taken up with work. A knowledge of good form is prima facie evidence that that portion of the well-bred person's life which is not spent under the observation of the spectator has been worthily spent in acquiring accomplishments that are of no lucrative effect. In the last analysis the value of manners lies in the fact that they are the voucher of a life of leisure." Thorstein Veblen   "I remember hearing from Professor Brian Bond some 10 years ago that Blackadder was being used in schools to teach the First World War. Horrified at this confusion of fact and fiction, I raised this during a talk to history teachers at a conference and suddenly realised that half of them were shifting uneasily in their seats." Antony Beevor   "It used to be argued that 1914 was a classic instance of a war begun through accident and error: that no statesmen wanted it but all were overborne by events. This view is now untenable. Certainly in late July the frantic telegram traffic became overwhelming, but governments were clear enough about what they were doing. A general conflict was the optimal outcome for none of them, but they preferred it to what seemed worse alternatives. Although Berlin and St Petersburg indeed miscalculated, all sides were willing to risk war rather than back down. The war developed from a Balkan confrontation in which neither Austria-Hungary nor Russia would yield and neither Germany nor France would restrain them. Once conflict spread from eastern to western Europe, Britain too was willing to intervene rather than see Belgium invaded and France beaten. In Vienna, Conrad had long urged war against Serbia, but Franz Joseph, Berchtold, and Tisza moved to military action only gradually, believing alternative choices were bankrupt, and only after considering how force would be used. In contrast they were recklessly insouciant about war with Russia, accepting it was likely but assuming that with German aid they could win. The Germans risked war against Russia and Britain with little idea of how to defeat either (and with what their general staff knew was a defective plan against France)." David Stevenson   "Had the ultimatum been delivered a month earlier, on the heels of the assassination, it would have been greeted with international sympathy, but by now—several weeks after the murder—the slow march of this démarche was such that Austria had lost its early edge in the crisis. Moral outrage had faded. The assassination was a month old, and in the meantime the archduke's corpse had been conveyed from Sarajevo to the coast, taken on a dreadnought to Trieste, transported by rail to a funeral in Vienna, and then transferred to the family crypt in Upper Austria, where it had been resting in peace for nearly three weeks. General Appel, commanding the Austro-Hungarian corps in Sarajevo, boiled with frustration: 'We have lost two martyrs for Austria's honor; we are the insulted empire; our mailed fist is ready to smash them, yet still not even a mobilization order! We await it feverishly.' Worse, German indiscretions—leaking the contents of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia to the Italians—had betrayed the whole operation. In St Petersburg on a state visit, French president Raymond Poincaré made plain that he and the Russians knew what was going on and that Austria-Hungary would not succeed in localizing the war: Serbia, Poincaré declared, 'has friends.'" Geoffrey Wawro   "Wilhelm II was by no means acting on his own; he was not even the principal advocate of war, and during the July crisis his advisers had at times pulled the wool over his eyes, notably when he seemed in danger of 'toppling over.' He had personally chosen all these advisers, however, because he considered them forceful or adaptable, and kept them in office because they followed the guidelines of his policy. The personal rule he had exercised throughout two decades had produced, in the Prussian-German state apparatus and partly also in the officer corps, a dysfunctional polyarchy and a courtier culture in which cautious men such as the ambassadors in London, Count Metternich or Prince Lichnowsky, could not make themselves heard." John Röhl   "Barely a week went by without him making inflammatory comments of some kind. He told his cousin Tsar Nicholas II that they should divide up the world between them, with Willy as Admiral of the Atlantic, and Nicky as Admiral of the Pacific. He called his uncle, Edward VII, a 'Satan'; he told his chancellor that he wanted to 'shoot down the socialists, behead them and render them harmless,' and then declare war on Britain. Revenging himself on his mother's native land, in fact, became an obsession. 'The English,' he promised with grim satisfaction, would be 'brought low some day.'" Dominic Sandbrook   "A generation has grown up that—online, at least—is deaf to tone, impervious to irony, incapable of grasping that thought can be tentative and argument exploratory. Theirs is a battleground of stated positions. One view lowers its head and charges its antlers at another. All we can hope is that in time they will all have butted themselves into unconsciousness." Howard Jacobson   "Shaw had the advantage, useful to any dramatist, of high spirits, rollicking humour, wit and fertility of comic invention. Ibsen as we know had a meagre power of invention; his characters under different names are very dully repeated and his intrigue from play to play is little varied. It is not a gross exaggeration to say that his only gambit is the sudden arrival of a stranger who comes into a stuffy room and opens the windows; whereupon the people who were sitting there catch their death of cold and everything ends unhappily. When you consider the mental content of what these authors had to offer, you can, unless you are but ill educated, hardly fail to see that it consisted of no more than the common culture of the day. Shaw's ideas were expressed with great vivacity. They could only have surprised because the intellectual capacity of the audience was inconsiderable. They surprise no longer; indeed, the young tend to look on them now as antiquated buffooneries. The disadvantage of ideas in the theatre is that if they are acceptable, they are accepted and so kill the play that helped to diffuse them. For nothing is so tiresome in the theatre as to be forced to listen to the exposition of ideas that you are willing to take for granted. Now that everyone admits the right of a woman to her own personality it is impossible to listen to A Doll's House without impatience. The dramatist of ideas loads the dice against himself." William Somerset Maugham   "From the point of view of our twenty-first-century world, where the only possible reaction to anything seems to be outraged offence, I find it a relief to go back to more innocent days and remember a time when we were not all such delicate flowers that every man's casual idiocy had the awesome power to offend us to our very cores." Zadie Smith