Hesiod (Greek: ΗσίοδοςHēsíodos) was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 B. C. E. , around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as individual persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought (he is sometimes considered history's first economist),[1] archaic Greek astronomy and ancienttime-keeping.
Ησίοδος, Έργα καὶ Ημέραι, in Alois Rzach (ed.), Hesiodi Carmina (Leipzig: B. G. Teubneri, 1908), pp. 53–95.
Ησίοδου Έργα καὶ Ημέραι, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica: With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920; orig. 1914), pp. 2–64.
Hesiod (tr. Thomas Cooke), Book I, Works and Days, in "The Works of Hesiod, Translated by Cooke," in English Translations, From Ancient and Modern Poems, By Various Authors Vol. II (London: 1810), pp. 745–753.
Hesiod (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod's Works and Days, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica: With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920; orig. 1914), pp. 3–65.
Would the immortalgods of men bestow A mind, how few the wants of life to know, They all the year, from labour free, might live On what the bounty of a day would give, They soon the rudder o'er the smoke would lay, And let the mule, and ox, at leisure stray: This sense to man the king of gods denies, In wrath to him who daring robb'd the skies; Dread ills the god prepar'd, unknown before, And the stol'n fire back to Heav'n he bore; But from Prometheus 'twas conceal'd in vain, Which for the use of man he stole again, And, artful in his fraud, brought from above, Clos'd in a hollow cane, deceiving Jove:
For the gods keep hidden from men the means of life. Else you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste. But Zeus in the anger of his heart hid it, because Prometheus the crafty deceived him; therefore he planned sorrow and mischief against men. He hid fire; but that the noble son of Iapetusstole again for men from Zeus the counsellor in a hollow fennel-stalk, so that Zeus who delights in thunder did not see it.
Ησίοδος, Θεογονία, in Alois Rzach (ed.), Hesiodi Carmina (Leipzig: B.G. Teubneri, 1908), pp. 1–50.
Ησίοδου Θεογονία, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica: With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920; orig. 1914), pp. 78–154.
Hesiod (tr. Thomas Cooke), "The Theogony, or The Generation of the Gods," in "The Theogony of Hesiod, Translated by Cooke," in English Translations, From Ancient and Modern Poems, By Various Authors Vol. II (London: 1810), pp. 763–773.
Hesiod (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White), The Theogony of Hesiod, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica: With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920; orig. 1914), pp. 79–155.
To the same godPrometheus ow'd his pains, Fast bound with hard inextricable chains To a large column in the midmost part, Who bore his suff'rings with a dauntlessheart; From Jove an eagle flew with wings wide spread, And on his never-dying liver fed; What with his rav'nous beak by day he tore The night supply'd, and furnish'd him with more:
And ready-witted Prometheushe bound with inextricable bonds, cruelchains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortalliver; but by night the liver grew as much again everyway as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day.
So spake th' eternal wisdom, full of ire, And from that hour deny'd the use of fire To wretched men, who pass on Earth their time, Mindful, Prometheus, of thy artfulcrime: But Jove in vain conceal'd the splendid flame; The son of Japhet of immortal fame, Brought the bright sparks clandestine from above Clos'd in a hollow cane; the thund'ringJove Soon, from the bitterness of soul, began To plot destruction to the peace of man.
So spake Zeus in anger, whose wisdom is everlasting; and from that time he was always mindful of the trick, and would not give the power of unwearying fire to the Melian race of mortalmen who live on the earth. But the noble son of Iapetus outwitted him and stole the far-seen gleam of unwearying fire in a hollow fennel stalk. And Zeus who thunders on high was stung in spirit, and his dear heart was angered when he saw amongst men the far-seen ray of fire.
Evelyn-White includes the following footnote to the term Melian:
A Scholiast explains: "Either because they (men) sprang from the Melian nymphs (cp. l. 187); or because, when they were born (?), they cast themselves under the ash-trees (μέλιαι), that is, the trees." The reference may be to the origin of men from ash-trees: cp. Works and Days, 145 and note.
Lǎozǐ (Chinese: 老子, c. 6th–5th century B. C. E.), also called Laozi, Lao Zi, Lao Tzu, Lao Tse, or Lao Tze, was a Chinese monistphilosopher. The Tao Te Ching (道德經, Pinyin: Dào Dé Jīng, or Dao De Jing) represents the sole document generally attributed to Laozi.
What was was ever, and ever shall be. For, if it had come into being, it needs must have been nothing before it came into being. Now, if it were nothing, in no wise could anything have arisen out of nothing.
Nor is anything empty: For what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot be.
Nor does it move; for it has nowhere to betake itself to, but is full. For if there were aught empty, it would betake itself to the empty. But, since there is naught empty, it has nowhere to betake itself to.
The word "tyranny" is used here in the neutral sense of "government by an absolute ruler," with no pejorative implication. Kratos, after all, is an executor of the will of Zeus, his right arm so to speak.
Joel Agee, "Introduction," in Æschylus, tr. Joel Agee, Prometheus Bound (New York, N. Y.: New York Review Books, 2014), p. xiii.
This is the earliest known use of the Greek word philantropia. In my translation, I used "philanthropy," trusting that in this context the word's original meaning, "love of humanity," will shine through the impoverished sense in which it is commonly used, perhaps with a note of bitter irony added.
Joel Agee, "Introduction," in Æschylus, tr. Joel Agee, Prometheus Bound (New York, N. Y.: New York Review Books, 2014), p. xiv, fn. 6.
And yet I can't accept my lot— neither in silence, nor in speech: that I was yoked in chains for bringing gifts to mortalmen. I hunted out and stole the secret spring of fire, and hid it in a fennel stalk, to teach them every art and skill, with endless benefit. For this offense I now must pay the penalty: to live nailed to this rock beneath the open sky.
Pray, worship, fawn upon your despot of the moment. But Zeus means less to me than nothing. Let him rule a little while. Let him play King. He will not be the highest god for very much longer.
Prometheus, to Hermes, on Zeus vis-à-vis Hermes, p. 60.
In his notes (p. 71), Agee says that "[m]ost editors of the play assume a gap of at least one line" in this section of the play, and admits to inventing this line and one other directly following it in order "to create a plausible bridge" in the dialogue.
Socrates left no writings of his own, thus our awareness of his teachings comes primarily from a few ancient authors who referred to him in their own works (see Socratic problem).
The words of Socrates, as quoted or portrayed in Plato's works, which are the most extensive source available for our present knowledge about his ideas.
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.
Confer Apology 21d (see below), Theaetetus 161b (see above) and Meno 80d1-3: "So now I do not know what virtue is; perhaps you knew before you contacted me, but now you are certainly like one who does not know."
Confer Cicero, Academica, Book I, section 1: "ipse se nihil scire id unum sciat ("He himself thinks he knows one thing, that he knows nothing"). Often quoted as "scio me nihil scire" or "scio me nescire." A variant is found in von Kues, De visione Dei, XIII, 146 (Werke, Walter de Gruyter, 1967, p. 312): "...et hoc scio solum, quia scio me nescire... [I know alone, that (or because) I know, that I do not know]." In the modern era, the Latin quote was back-translated to Greek as "ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα", hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda). (See also "I know that I know nothing.")
When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.
21d
For if you kill me, you will not easily find another such person at all, even if to say in a ludicrous way, attached on the city by the god, like on a large and well-bred horse, by its size and laziness both needing arousing by some gadfly; in this way the god seems to have fastened me on the city, some such one who arousing and persuading and reproaching each one of you I do not stop the whole day settling down all over. Thus such another will not easily come to you, men, but if you believe me, you will spare me; but perhaps you might possibly be offended, like the sleeping who are awakened, striking me, believing Anytus, you might easily kill, then the rest of your lives you might continue sleeping, unless the god caring for you should send you another.
30e
If I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good to either you or to myself. …for the truth is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteouosness and wrong in the State, will save his life; he who will really fight for right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one.
31e
I have had no regular disciples: but if anyone likes to come and hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether he be young or old, he may freely come. …whether he turns out to be a bad man or a good one, that cannot be justly laid to my charge, as I never taught him anything.
33a-b
Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say that the greatest good of a man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living—that you are still less likely to believe.
37e-38a
ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ (ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos anthrôpôi)
The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
38a
Variant translations: (More closely) The unexamining life is not worth living for a human being The life which is unexamined is not worth living An unexamined life is not worth living The unexamined life is not the life for man Life without enquiry is not worth living for a man
I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. … The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.
38e-39a
For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censoring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.
39c-d
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.
Note: Generally, the early works of Plato are considered to be close to the spirit of Socrates, whereas the later works, including Phaedo, may possibly be products of Plato's elaborations.
In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams "that I should make music." The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words: Make and cultivate music, said the dream. And hitherto I imagined that this was only intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which has always been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music.
And now that the hour of departure is appointed to me, this is the hope with which I depart, and not I only, but every man that believes that he has his mind purified.
In the book, O’Brien says of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford, “By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still clean.”
In the 1984 film Nineteen Eighty-Four based on Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith is seen at the end of the film by the citizens of Oceania confessing, saying, “I’m glad I was caught. I was mentally deranged. Now I am cured. I ask only for you to accept my love of our leader. I ask only to be shot while my mind is still clean.”
…as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises from too great confidence of inexperience; you trust a man and think him altogether true and good and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially within the circle of his most trusted friends, as he deems them, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. …The reason is that a man, having to deal with other men, has no knowledge of them; for if he had knowledge he would have known the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them.
…nothing is more uncommon than a very large or a very small man; and this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white; and whether the instances you select be man or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes, but many are in the mean between them.
Let us…be careful of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no truth or health or soundness in any arguments at all; but let us rather say that there is as yet no health in us, and that we must quit ourselves like men and do our best to gain health…
* It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which the mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming.
Socrates as quoted in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
Socrates having heard Plato read the Lysis, said, "O Hercules! what a number of lies the young man has told about me." For he had set down a great many things as sayings of Socrates which he never said.
This statement actually predates Socrates, and was used as an Inscription at the Oracle of Delphi. It is a saying traditionally ascribed to one of the "Seven Sages of Greece," notably Solon, but accounts vary as to whom. Socrates himself is reported to have quoted it although it is very likely that Thales was in fact the one who first stated it.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
It's important to remember that Thomas Huxley recognized Socrates as the first agnostic. Socrates very much believed in a God, although his deity was somewhat vague and outside of his people's polytheistic religion. Philosophically Socrates was the very essence of agnosticism.
James Kirk Wall, in Agnosticism : The Battle Against Shameless Ignorance (2011), p. 10
Dum loquimur, fugerit invida Aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.
Book I, ode xi, line 7
Cf. John Conington's translation: In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebbed away, Seize the present, trust tomorrow e'en as little as you may.
sì perché l'autorità dell'opinione di mille nelle scienze non val per una scintilla di ragione di un solo, sì perché le presenti osservazioni spogliano d'autorità i decreti de' passati scrittori, i quali se vedute l'avessero, avrebbono diversamente determinato.
Third letter on sunspots (December 1612) to Mark Wesler (1558 - 1614), as quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) by Stillman Drake, pp. 134–135; Italian text online at Liber Liber, also from IntraText.
As quoted in Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859) by François Arago, as translated by Baden Powell, Robert Grant, and William Fairbairn, p. 365
Letter to Johannes Kepler (1596), as quoted in The Story of Civilization: The Age of Reason Begins, 1558–1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 603.
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1935) by Dale Carnegie, p. 117; also paraphrased as "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself."
"And yet it moves" or "still it moves" is a comment he is alleged to have made in regard to the Earth after his recantation before the Inquisition. Giuseppe Baretti was apparently the first person to record the story. Noted as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (1990), p. 30.
I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.
21 September 1747.
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
22 February 1748.
The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive[…]
We must not suppose that, because a man is a rationalanimal, he will, therefore, always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in pursuit of it. No, we are complicatedmachines; and though we have one main spring that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometime stop that motion.
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent.
It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
Zadig (1747).
C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir imaginé que la virginité pouvait être une vertu.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
Notebooks (c. 1735–c. 1750)
Note: This quotation is from the so-called Leningrad Notebook, also known as Le Sottisier; it is one of several posthumously published notebooks of Voltaire.
Il est dangereux d’avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
"Catalogue pour la plupart des écrivains français qui ont paru dans Le Siècle de Louis XIV, pour servir à l'histoire littéraire de ce temps," Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1752)
Note: The most frequently attributed variant of this quote is: It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Le doute n'est pas un état bien agréable, mais l'assurance est un état ridicule.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
Letter to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia (28 November 1770). English: in S. G. Tallentyre (ed.), Voltaire in His Letters. New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1919. p.232. French: Au prince royal de prusse, le 28 novembre, in M. Palissot (ed.), Oeuvres de Voltaire: Lettres Choisies du Roi de Prusse et de M. de Voltaire, Tome II. Paris : Chez Baudoiun, 1802. p. 419.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde.
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
"Liberty of the Press," Dictionnaire philosophique (1785-1789).
Note: The Dictionnaire philosophique was a posthumously published collection of articles combining the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (published under various editions and titles from 1764 to 1777), the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (published from 1770 to 1774), articles written for the Encyclopédie and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, the manuscript known as l'Opinion sur l'alphabet and a number of previously published miscellaneous articles.
La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint.
Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.
On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare."
People sometimes say: "Common sense is quite rare."
"Common Sense" (1765)
Note: The better known variant of this quote is "Common sense is not so common," found in the Philosophical Dictionary entry "Common sense" [sens commun].
La foi consiste à croire ce que la raison ne croit pas.
Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.
"The Flood" (1764)
Voulez-vous avoir de bonnes lois; brûlez les vôtres, et faites-en de nouvelles.
If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.
Qu’est-ce que la tolérance? c’est l’apanage de l’humanité. Nous sommes tous pétris de faiblesses et d’erreurs; pardonnons-nous réciproquement nos sottises, c’est la première loi de la nature.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly—that is the first law of nature.
La vertu suppose la liberté, comme le transport d’un fardeau suppose la force active. Dans la contrainte point de vertu, et sans vertu point de religion. Rends-moi esclave, je n’en serai pas meilleur. Le souverain même n’a aucun droit d’employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n’est pas plus soumise à l’autorité que la maladie ou la santé.
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.
"Canon Law: Ecclesiastical Ministry" (1771).
En général, l’art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d’argent qu’on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
"Money" (1770).
Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins qu’il n’ait tué en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
For a discussion of this quotation, which is uncertain in origin but was quoted long before Voltaire, see the following: [2]
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.[3]
Another possible source for the quote was proposed by Norbert Guterman, editor of "A Book of French Quotations," who noted a letter to M. le Riche (6 February 1770) in which Voltaire is quoted as saying: "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" ("Monsieur l'abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire"). This remark, however, does not appear in the letter.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Not a day goes by without our using the word optimism, coined by Voltaire against Leibniz, who had demonstrated (in spite of the Ecclesiastes and with the approval of the Church) that we live in the best of possible worlds. Voltaire, very reasonably, denied that exorbitant opinion... Leibniz could have replied that a world which has given us Voltaire has some right to be considered the best.
Thoſe who would give up eſſentialLiberty, to purchaſe a little temporary Safety, DESERVE neither Liberty nor Safety.[4]
Often written in modern times as: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
This was first written by Franklin for the Pennsylvania Assembly in its Reply to the Governor (11 November 1755).
This quote was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759); the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson, but Franklin did claim responsibility for some small excerpts that were used in it.
An earlier variant by Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack (1738): "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
Many paraphrased derivatives of this have often become attributed to Franklin:
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.
Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Widely attributed to Franklin on the Internet, sometimes without the second sentence. It is not found in any of his known writings, and the word "lunch" is not known to have appeared anywhere in English literature until the 1820s, decades after his death. The phrasing itself has a very modern tone and the second sentence especially might not even be as old as the Internet. Some of these observations are made in response to a query at Google Answers.[5]
The earliest known similar statements are:
A democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Gary Strand, Usenet group sci.environment, 23 April 1990. [6]
Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.
Marvin Simkin, "Individual Rights", Los Angeles Times, 12 January 1992:[7]
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. … In civilised society he [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. …[M]an has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely.
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers; is the warfare of theChristianking of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Source. Known as the "anti-slavery clause", this section was removed from the Declaration at the behest of representatives of South Carolina.
To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength.[8]
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.
Since at least 1997 the statement "Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now" has been misquoted in paraphrased form as "If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny".
The Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them.
Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. "No two, say I, have established the same". Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all.
For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. … And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other.[9]
It should be our endeavour to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most, when we shall have carried our point against her. Our interest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent of whatever they may chuse to bring into our ports, and asking the same in theirs. Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war.
In this stanza, the apprentice speaks with joy that his master is away, for it affords him the opportunity to employ the magicks he has watched his master use.
Hat der alte Hexenmeiſter, Sich doch einmal wegbegeben! Und nun ſollen ſeine Geiſter Auch nach meinem Willen leben. Seine Wort und Werke Merkt ich, und den Brauch, Und mit Geiſtesſtärke Thu ich Wunder auch.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devils account is, that the Meſsiah fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyſs
[attributed to Isaiah] […] my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing […]
does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas. now it appears finite & corrupt.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific. the other, the Devouring: to the devourer, it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.
But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unleſs the Devourer as a sea recieved the exceſs of his delights.
[...] a void boundleſs as a nether sky appeard beneath us. & we held by the roots of treas and hung over this immensity [...]
By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyſs, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swum in infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the air [...]
[speaking of Leviathan] [...] soon we saw his mouth & red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence.
[the theme of a harper] The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.
But I arose, and sought for the mill & there I found my Angel, who surprised asked me how I escaped?
I answerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper, But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours?
[...] & I took him to the alter and open'd the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit [...]
[...] & it is but lost time to converse with you [...]
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise [...]
"To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Neſt, with the Plough, November, 1785", Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Kilmarnock: John Wilson, 1786), pp. 138–140
But Mouſie, thou art no thy-land, In proving foreſight may be in vain: The beſt laid ſchemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promiſ'd joy!
But Mousie, thou art not alone, In proving foresight may be in vain: The best-laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Go oft awry, An' lea'e us naught but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!
But Mouse, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be in vain: The best-laid plans of Mice and Men, Often go awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!
But, mousie, thou art not alane, In proving foresight may be in vain, The best laid schemes of mice and men, Go oft astray, And leave us nought but grief and pain, To rend our day.
O wad ſome Pow'r the giftie gie us To ſee ourſels as others ſee us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An' fooliſh notion: What airs in dreſs an' gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n Devotion!
O would some Pow'r the gift to give us To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us An' foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait would leave us, And ev'n Devotion!
Oh would some Power the gift to give us To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us And foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait would leave us, And even Devotion!
If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them
A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.
It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay any tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected.
But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.
The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman.
In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary, they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their number to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep themselves practically concealed.
But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.
The full title of this work is Natural Law; or The Science of Justice: A Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society; Showing that All Legislation Whatsoever is an Absurdity, a Usurpation, and a Crime. Part First. No "Part Second" was ever authored.
The science of mine and thine—the science of justice—is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Section I, page 5
These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.
The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.
So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other.
Section I, pages 5–6
Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty—that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men—his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically, if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it.
Section II, page 6
No objection can be made to these voluntary associations upon the ground that they would lack that knowledge of justice, as a science, which would be necessary to enable them to maintain justice, and themselves avoid doing injustice. Honesty, justice, natural law, is usually a very plain and simple matter, easily understood by common minds. Those who desire to know what it is, in any particular case, seldom have to go far to find it.
Section IV, page 8
Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.
If justice be not a natural principle, it is no principle at all. If it be not a natural principle, there is no such thing as justice. If it be not a natural principle, all that men have ever said or written about it, from time immemorial, has been said and written about that which had no existence. If it be not a natural principle, all the appeals for justice that have ever been heard, and all the struggles for justice that have ever been witnessed, have been appeals and struggles for a mere fantasy, a vagary of the imagination, and not for a reality.
If justice be not a natural principle, then there is no such thing as injustice; and all the crimes of which the world has been the scene, have been no crimes at all; but only simple events, like the falling of the rain, or the setting of the sun; events of which the victims had no more reason to complain than they had to complain of the running of the streams, or the growth of vegetation.
If justice be not a natural principle, governments (so-called) have no more right or reason to take cognizance of it, or to pretend or profess to take cognizance of it, than they have to take cognizance, or to pretend or profess to take cognizance, of any other nonentity; and all their professions of establishing justice, or of maintaining justice, or of rewarding justice, are simply the mere gibberish of fools, or the frauds of imposters.
But if justice be a natural principle, then it is necessarily an immutable one; and can no more be changed—by any power inferior to that which established it—than can the law of gravitation, the laws of light, the principles of mathematics, or any other natural law or principle whatever; and all attempts or assumptions, on the part of any man or body of men—whether calling themselves governments, or by any other name—to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion, in the place of justice, as a rule of conduct for any human being, are as much an absurdity, an usurpation, and a tyranny, as would be their attempts to set up their own commands, wills, pleasure, or discretion in the place of any and all the physical, mental, and moral laws of the universe.
If there be any such principle as justice, it is, of necessity, a natural principle; and, as such, it is a matter of science, to be learned and applied like any other science. And to talk of either adding to, or taking from, it, by legislation, is just as false, absurd, and ridiculous as it would be to talk of adding to, or taking from, mathematics, chemistry, or any other science, by legislation.
Sections I–II, pages 11–12
If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.
On the other hand, if there be no such principle as justice, or natural law, then every human being came into the world utterly destitute of rights; and coming into the world destitute of rights, he must necessarily forever remain so. For if no one brings any rights with him into the world, clearly no one can ever have any rights of his own, or give any to another. And the consequence would be that mankind could never have any rights; and for them to talk of any such things as their rights, would be to talk of things that never had, never will have, and never can have any existence.
Section IV, pages 12–13
[A]ll human legislation is simply and always an assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion exists. It is, therefore, simply and always an intrusion, an absurdity, an usurpation, and a crime.
Section V, page 13
If there be in nature such a principle as justice, it is necessarily the only political principle there ever was, or ever will be. All the other so-called political principles, which men are in the habit of inventing, are not principles at all. They are either the mere conceits of simpletons, who imagine they have discovered something better than truth, and justice, and universal law; or they are mere devices and pretences, to which selfish and knavish men resort as means to get fame, and power, and money.
Quelle forme de gouvernement allons-nous préférer? — Eh! pouvez-vous le demander, répond sans doute quelqu'un de mes plus jeunes lecteurs; vous êtes républicain. — Républicain, oui; mais ce mot ne précise rien. Res publica, c'est la chose publique; or, quiconque veut la chose publique, sous quelque forme de gouvernement que ce soit, peut se dire républicain. Les rois aussi sont républicains. — Eh bien! vous êtes démocrate? — Non. — Quoi! vous seriez monarchique? — Non. — Constitutionnel? — Dieu m'en garde. — Vous êtes donc aristocrate? — Point du tout. — Vous voulez un gouvernement mixte? — Encore moins. — Qu'êtesvous donc? — Je suis anarchiste.
— Je vous entends: vous faites de la satire; ceci est à l'adresse du gouvernement. — En aucune façon: vous venez d'entendre ma profession de foi sérieuse et mûrement réfléchie; quoique très ami de l'ordre, je suis, dans toute la force du terme, anarchiste. Écoutez-moi.
Caractères de la communauté et de la propriété," §2 of Seconde partie of "Exposition psychologique de l'idée de juste et d'injuste, et détermination du principe du gouvernement et du droit," ch. V of Premier mémoire of Qu'est-ce que la propriete? ou recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement (Paris: Garnier Frères, Libraires, 1849), p. 237.
Translation:
What is to be the form of government in the future? I hear some of my youngerreaders reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican." "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs—no matter under what form of government—may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans." — "Well! you are a democrat?" — "No." "What! you would have a monarchy." — "No." — "A constitutionalist?" — "God forbid!" — "You are then an aristocrat?" — "Not at all." — "You want a mixed government?" — "Still less." — "What are you, then?" — "I am an anarchist."
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government." — "By no means. I have just given you my series and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me."
P. J. Proudhon, tr. Benj. R. Tucker, "Characteristics of Communism and of Property," §2 of Part Second of "Psychological Exposition of the Idea of Justice and Injustice, and a Determination of the Principle of Government and of Right," ch. V of First Memoir of What is Property? or, An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and of Government (Princeton, Mass.: Benj. R. Tucker, 1876; orig 1849), pp. 271–272.
Être GOUVERNÉ, c'est être gardé à vue, inspecté, espionné, dirigé, légiféré, réglementé, parqué, endoctriné, prêché, contrôlé, estimé, apprécié, censuré, commandé, par des êtres qui n'ont ni le titre, ni la science, ni la vertu… Être GOUVERNÉ, c'est être, à chaque opération, à chaque transaction, à chaque mouvement, noté, enregistré, recensé, tarifé, timbré, toisé, coté, cotisé, patenté, licencié, autorisé, apostillé, admonesté, empêché, réformé, redressé, corrigé. C'est, sous prétexte d'utilité publique, et au nom de l'intérêt général, être mis à contribution, exercé, rançonné, exploité, monopolisé, concussionné, pressuré, mystifié, volé ; puis, à la moindre résistance, au premier mot de plainte, réprimé, amendé, vilipendé, vexé, traqué, houspillé, assommé, désarmé, garrotté, emprisonné, fusillé, mitraillé, jugé, condamné, déporté, sacrifié, vendu, trahi, et pour comble, joué, berné, outragé, déshonoré. Voilà le gouvernement, voilà sa justice, voilà sa morale !
"Epilogue," Idée générale de la révolution au XIXe siècle (The General Idea of the Revolution in the XIXth Century; Paris: Garner Frères, Libraires, 1851), p. 341.
I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,—not because he had any hand in earning it,—not because I owed it to him,—nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.
Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867–29 June1913) was an individualist anarchist writer and publisher active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tandy was a member of the "Denver Circle", a group of men who associated with Benjamin Tucker and contributed to the periodical Liberty. His major work was the book Voluntary Socialism: A Sketch (1896), a work on individualist anarchist political economy.
Earnest V. Starr (28 May1870–unknown) was a farmer and homesteader notable for being tried, convicted, and sentenced on 27 September1918 to 10–20 years of hard labor in a state penitentiary as well as fined $500 plus court costs for the so-called crime of sedition by "utter[ing] contemptuous and slurring language about the flag [of the United States] and language calculated to bring the flag into contempt and disrepute."
What is this thing anyway? Nothing but a piece of cotton with a little paint on it, and some other marks in the corner there. I will not kiss that thing. It might be covered with microbes.
In the matter of his offense and sentence, obviously petitioner was more sinned against than sinning. It is clear that he was in the hands of one of those too common mobs, bent upon vindicating its peculiar standard of patriotism and its odd concept of respect for the flag by compelling him to kiss the latter—a spectacle for the pity as well as the laughter of gods and men! Its unlawful and disorderly conduct, not his justresistance, nor the trivial and innocuous retort into which they goaded him, was calculated to degrade the sacred banner and to bring it into contempt. Its members, not he, should have been punished.
Although Bourquin denies Starr the writ of habeas corpus in this opinion, he makes it clear that he denied the writ solely because the law had been deemed "valid", not because he had any sense that there was any validity, virtue, or justice in Starr's actual imprisonment; that he was of the opinion that the mob's excessive patriotism "descend[ed]" to a "fanaticism" both "reprehensible" and "cruel"; and that the sentence rendered against Starr was "horrifying".
The most extreme penalty for oral flag desecration was handed down under Montana's draconian 1918 law: E. V. Starr was sentenced during World War I to ten to twenty years at hard labor in the state penitentiary, along with a $500 fine, for refusing a mob's demands that he kiss the flag (a favorite wartime vigilante punishment for the allegedly disloyal) and for terming it "nothing but a piece of cotton" with "a little paint" and "some other marks" on it which "might be covered with microbes."16
Robert Justin Goldstein, "The Pre-1984 Origins of the American Flag Desecration Controversy", Ch. 1 of Burning the Flag: The Great 1989–1990 American Flag Desecration Controversy (Kent, O. H.: The Kent State University Press, 1996), p. 7
The permeability of the boundary between outlawing disrespect and compellingrespect for the flag became especially clear during periods of crisis. During World War I, hundreds of people suspected of political dissidence or merely of insufficiently enthusiastic patriotism were, as in the Starr case, attacked by mobs that sought to compel them to kiss the flag, often while government officials looked the other way or joined in.
Robert Justin Goldstein, "The Pre-1984 Origins of the American Flag Desecration Controversy", Ch. 1 of Burning the Flag: The Great 1989–1990 American Flag Desecration Controversy (Kent, O. H.: The Kent State University Press, 1996), p. 8
In compliance with Section Three of the Uniform State Flag Law, subversive elements could be arrested not only for supporting the enemy, but also casting contempt upon the flag by word or deed (Guenter, 1990). In a case that demonstrates the unforgiving nature of compulsory patriotism during that period, E. V. Starr was arrested under the Montana sedition law for refusing a mob's demand that he kiss the flag and for denouncing it as "nothing but a piece of cotton" with "a little bit of paint." For that transgression, Starr was sentenced to hard labor in the state penitentiary for 10 to 20 years, along with a $100 fine (Ex Parte Starr 1920; refer to Chapter 3). Incidentally, the Montana sedition law (replete with provisions for flag protection) served as a model for the federal Sedition Act. During the First World War, several states increased penalties for flag desecration: in Louisiana and Texas violations were punishable by five and twenty-five years in prison, respectively.
Michael Welch, "Flag Controversies During the World Wars" in Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest (Hawthorne, N. Y.: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 2000), p. 27
Despite mainline respect for the flag, U.S. history also includes incidents of fanaticism and fetishism, culminating in informal social control and vigilante justice (Welch, 1992). Punishment for flag desecration, from a Durkheimian perspective, represents a communalreaction to violations of the sanctity of nationalism, a defense mechanism situated at the moral center of American society. Whereas the formal penalties for violating flag protection laws are based on legal constructs borrowed from the religious sphere (i.e., desecration of a venerated object), informal punishments also reflect religious ideation in enforcing patriotism and condemning outcasts. Throughout the history of the flag-protection crusade, especially during World War I, vigilante mobs forced persons of questionable patriotism to kiss the flag (Peterson and Fite, 1957; also see Watkins, 1993). Kissing the flag is a symbolic expression of respect firmly rooted in formal religious rituals, resembling the kissing of the holy cross, holy relics, rosaries, and finger rings of bishops, Cardinals, and the pontiff.
Perhaps the most draconian punishment for (oral) flag desecration was imposed on E. V. Starr in Montana during the First World War (see Chapter 1). The sentence was upheld on appeal, as federal judges concurred with the Halter precedent. Interestingly, though, District Court Judge George M. Bourquin admonished the sentence as "horrifying," but was himself powerless to overturn it. "In the matter of his offense and sentence, obviously petitioner was more sinned against than sinning. It is clear that he was in the hands of one of those too common mobs, bent upon vindicating its peculiar standard of patriotism and its odd concept for respect for the flag by compelling him to kiss the latter" (Starr, 1920, 146). Referring to the unruly mob's "unlawful and disorderly conduct . . . they, not he, should have been punished" (Starr, 146). Clearly, the Starr controversy blurs the line between formal and informal measures of social control. Indeed, government and law enforcement officials often turned a blind eye to vigilante violence and in some cases participated in the victimization of flag desecrators and those unwilling to defer to the Stars and Stripes (see Peterson and Fite, 1957).
Michael Welch, "Civil Religion as Informal Control" in Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest (Hawthorne, N. Y.: Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 2000), p. 38
Henry Louis Mencken (12 September1880–29 January1956), better known as H. L. Mencken, was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore" and the "American Nietzsche". He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (30 July1881–21 June1940) was a highly-decorated U. S. Marine, and one of the two Marines who received two Medals of Honor for separate acts of outstanding heroism. He has a 34-year career as a Marine and is is well known for having later become an outspoken critic of U. S. wars and their consequences, as well as exposing the so-called "Business Plot", a purported plan to replace the U. S. president (Franklin D. Roosevelt) with a veteran-focused dictator whom the plotters had hoped would be even more fascistic than F. D. R. himself. Butler is perhaps best known today as the author of the 1935 book War Is a Racket.
Thus, Butler (and Archer) assumed that the existence of a financially backed plot meant that fascism was imminent, and that the planners represented a widespread and coherent group, having both the intent and the capacity to execute their ideas. So, when his testimony was criticized, and even ridiculed, in the media, and ignored in Washington, Butler saw (and Archer sees) conspiracy everywhere. Instead, it is plausible to conclude that the honest and straightforward, but intellectually and politically unsophisticated, Butler perceived in simplistic terms what were, in fact, complex trends and events. Thus, he leaped to the simplistic conclusion that the President and the Republic were in mortal danger. In essence, Archer swallowed his hero whole.
James E. Sargent, "Review of: The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer", The History Teacher (Society for History Education) 8, no. 1 (November 1974) pp. 151–2.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the first lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator.
Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testingattitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. It will not let the elders cry peace, where there is no peace. By its fiercesarcasms it keeps issues alive in the world until they are settled right. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avengingNemesis on its trail.
Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress—one might say, the only lever of progress.
Randolph Bourne, “The Price of Radicalism” (a review of Seymour Deming's The Pillar of Fire), The New Republic (11 March 1916).
Intellectualradicalism should not mean repeating stale dogmas of Marxism. It should not mean the study of socialism. It had better mean a restless, controversialcriticism of current ideas, and a hammering out of some clear-sighted philosophy that shall be this pillar of fire. The young radical today is not asked to be a martyr, but he is asked to be a thinker, an intellectual leader. So far as the official radicals deprecate such an enterprise they make their movement sterile. Yet how often when attempts are made to group radicals on an intellectual basis does not some orthodoxelder of the socialist church arise and solemnly denounce such intellectual snobbishness.
War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. … [I]n general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Other values such as artisticcreation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State, are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.
¶11. Published under "War and the Herd," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 9.
¶23. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 14.
It cannot be too firmly realized that war…is the chief function of States. … War cannot exist without a military establishment, and a military establishment cannot exist without a State organization. War has an immemorial tradition and heredity only because the State has a long tradition and heredity. But they are inseparably and functionally joined. We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form. … [W]ith the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated. … No one wlil deny that war is a vast complex of life-destroying and life-crippling forces. If the State's chief function is war, then it is chiefly concerned with coordinating and developing the powers and techniques which make for destruction. And this means not only the actual and potential destruction of the enemy, but of the nation at home as well. For the very existence of a State in a system of States means that the nation lies always under a risk of war and invasion, and the calling away of energy into military pursuits means a crippling of the productive and life-enhancing process of the national life.
¶28. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 17–18.
All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modernfreecreative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. War is the health of the State. Only when the State is at war does the modern society function with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical patrioticdevotion, cooperation of services, which have always been the ideal of the State lover. … How unregenerate the ancient State may be…is indicated by the laws against sedition, and by the Government's unreformed attitude on foreign policy.
¶35. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 21.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that the normal relation of States is war.
¶36. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 22, where the term relation is rendered relations.
¶44. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 25, which omits the Oxford comma in the first sentence.
¶9. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 30–31.
Every little school boy is trained to recite the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. It is taken as axiomatic that under them the new nation was falling into anarchy and was only saved by the wisdom and energy of the Convention. … The nation had to be strong to repel invasion, strong to pay to the last loved copper penny the debts of the propertied and the provident ones, strong to keep the unpropertied and improvident from ever using the government to secure their own prosperity at the expense of moneyed capital. … No one suggests that the anxiety of the leaders of the heretofore unquestioned ruling classes desired the revision of the Articles and labored so weightily over a new instrument not because the nation was failing under the Articles, but because it was succeeding only too well. Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletariandemocracy. … All we know is that at a time when the current of politicalprogress was in the direction of agrarian and proletarian democracy, a force hostile to it gripped the nation and imposed upon it a powerful form against which it was never to succeed in doing more than blindly struggle. The liberating virus of the Revolution was definitely expunged, and henceforth if it worked at all it had to work against the State, in opposition to the armed and respectable power of the nation.
¶13. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 33–34.
The President is an electedking, but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance in the course of political evolution than the fact that he is pragmatically a king. … Kings have often been selected this way in Europeanhistory, and the Roman Emperor was regularly chosen by election.
¶19. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 36.
Bourne would have none of it. Instead, he scrutinized the ideas he had held in common with them, holding each up to the light—or rather, darkness—about him.
Michael Grieg, "Introduction" (1946) to Randolph Bourne's The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 4.
This little sparrowlike man, tiny twisted bit of flesh in blackcape, always in pain and ailing, put a pebble in his sling and hit Goliath square in the forehead with it.
John Dos Passos, "Foreword" to Randolph Bourne's The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 2.
Randolph Bourne has not been forgotten, not completely. People are still reading his work. They're still talking about his ideas and about his memorable phrases. The most famous of these has gradually become so widely quoted in our culture that millions of people have heard it, even heard it repeatedly, without ever learning who originally wrote or said it: "War is the health of the State."
The work that's being done 24/7 at Antiwar.com not only honors Randolph Bourne's contribution to the libertarian tradition; it also helps to assure that that tradition will continue and grow.
Ibid.
Finally, we must allude to the domestic tyranny that is the inevitable accompaniment of inter-State war, a tyranny that usually lingers long after the war is over. Randolph Bournerealized that "war is the health of the State." It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. The root myth that enables the State to wax fat off war is the canard that war is a defense by the State of its subjects. The facts are precisely the reverse. For if war is the health of the State, it is also its greatest danger. A State can only "die" by defeat in war or by revolution. In war, therefore, the State frantically mobilizes the people to fight for it against another State, under the pretext that it is fighting for them. Society becomes militarized and statized, it becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betrayingtruth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale—as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it—of an "army on the march."
Murray N. Rothbard, "On Relations Between States," ch. 25, in "A Theory of Liberty," pt. II of The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998, orig. 1982), pp. 196–197.
Murray N. Rothbard, Part II of "Reagan War Watch," The Libertarian Forum 16, no. 1–2, ed. Murray N. Rothbard (New York, NY: Joseph R. Peden, January–February 1984; Double Issue; mislabelled vol. 18).
Jorge Luis Borges (24 August1899–14 June1986) was an Argentine writer who is considered one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century. Most famous in the English speaking world for his short stories and fictive essays, Borges was also a poet, critic, translator and man of letters.
El original es infiel a la traducción.
The original is unfaithful to the translation.
On William Thomas Beckford's Vathek (1782) and Samuel Henley's 1786 translation, in "Sobre el Vathek de William Beckford" (1943)
Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.
Statement to the Argentine Society of Letters (c. 1946)
His many years had reduced and polished him the way water smooths and polishes a stone or generations of men polish a proverb.
"The Man on the Threshold", in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998). Cf. "The South" in Ficciones (1944)
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
"Deutsches Requiem" as translated by Julian Palley (1958)
Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.
"Partial Magic in the Quixote", Labyrinths (1964)
As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. I don't know really. All of those myths that we impose on ourselves—and they make for hatred, for war, for enmity—are very harmful. Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.
"The Death of Politics", essay in Playboy (March 1969); also available in Hess's autobiography, Mostly on the Edge.[14][15][16]
[Republicans in Hess's youth] represented the only strong anti-imperialist political position. Anti-imperialist? Republicans? Uh-huh. But Republicans were not smart enough to call it that. They let it be labeled isolationism, as though they wanted the United States to sneak off the world stage, slam the doors, and bolt the windows. The underlying Republican argument, that we should trade with everyone but not interfere with or intervene in their internal politics, was lost behind that unattractive label.
The good Lord raised this mighty republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free—not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bullying of communism.
Now, my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom. Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return to proven ways—not because they are old, but because they are true. We must, and we shall, set the tides running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom—freedom made orderly for this nation by our constitutionalgovernment; freedom under a government limited by the laws of nature and of nature's God; freedom balanced so that order-lacking-liberty will not become the slavery of the prison shell [cell]; balanced so that liberty-lacking-order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.
Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.
Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for Divine Will, and this nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.
Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. They—and let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellishtyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of equality. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
And I know that the road to freedom is a long and a challenging road. And I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmentalpaternalism.
In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there must be room, room for deliberation of the energy and the talent of the individual; otherwise our vision is blind at the outset.
Our towns and our cities, then our counties, then our states, then our regional compacts—and only then, the national government. That, let me remind you, is the ladder of liberty, built by decentralisedpower. On it also we must have balance between the branches of government at every level.
Our republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.
Libertarianism is clearly the most, perhaps the only truly radical movement in America. It grasps the problems of society by the roots. It is not reformist in any sense. It is revolutionary in every sense.
The truth, of course, is that libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private.
Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system which has condoned, built on, and profited from slavery; has expanded through and exploited a brutal and aggressive imperial and colonial foreign policy, and continues to hold the people in a roughly serf–master relationship to political–economic power concentrations.
Libertarians are concerned, first and foremost, with that most valuable of properties, the life of each individual. … Property rights pertaining to material objects are seen by libertarians as stemming from and…secondary to the right to own, direct, and enjoy one’s own life and those appurtenances thereto which may be acquired without coercion.
Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche.
This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom.
Libertarianism is a people's movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-associate, and, as they see fit, participate in the decisions affecting their lives. This means a truly free market in everything from ideas to idiosyncrasies. It means people free collectively to organize the resources of their immediate community or individualistically to organize them; it means the freedom to have a community-based and supported judiciary where wanted, none where not, or private arbitration services where that is seen as most desirable. The same with police. The same with schools, hospitals, factories, farms, laboratories, parks, and pensions. Liberty means the right to shape your own institutions. It opposes the right of those institutions to shape you simply because of accreted power or gerontological status.
There is scarcely anything radical about, for instance, those who say that the poor should have a larger share of the Federal budget. That is reactionary, asking that the institution of state theft be made merely more palatable by distributing its loot to more sympathetic persons.
Narrator: What’s your relationship with the IRS these days? Karl Hess: [laughs] Miserable. Terrible. Narrator: And why's that? Karl Hess: Well, you know, they ask every now and then when I'm going to behave myself and I tell them never and I… Narrator: Are you not paying federaltaxes? Karl Hess: Yeah, nothing. Narrator: I guess they don’t take too kindly to that? Karl Hess: No, they think it’s terrible. Therese Hess: On the other hand, they're not being very active about it right now. Karl Hess: Well, no, the last time he was here… Therese Hess: It's like it's no fun anymore or something. Karl Hess: Something like that. The local people seem to take more of a kindly view as though they really think it's a rotten thing. I'm not doing anybody any harm. And…they seem to be more sensitive. [laughs] Or decent somehow. I don't…I don't know, the federal people are… Narrator: What can they do? Karl Hess: Put me in jail.
Well, it's hard to tell on the basis of the Party'srhetoric, after all they're running for state office, but my experience is that most people who are in the Libertarian Party have pretty decent anarchist impulses, even if they do not say they are anarchists—most of them will say they are libertarians, at any rate.
And one thing that is useful is that they have a fairly well-refined analysis of why they aren't conservative. It took the New Left to do a proper analysis on American liberals, it seems to me, and I suspect that the libertarians are doing the best analysis of American conservatives.
I think that they are quite good people, and that the Party contains within it probably more people of an anarchist tendency than any other organisation in the country.
[A]fter I got evicted from the Republican Party, I began reading considerably more of the works of American anarchists, thanks largely to Murray Rothbard…and I was just amazed.
When I read Emma Goldman, it was as though everything I had hoped that the Republican Party would stand for suddenly came out crystallised. It was a magnificently clear statement. And another interesting things about reading Emma Goldman is that you immediately see that, consciously or not, she's the source of the best in Ayn Rand. She has the essential points that the Ayn Rand philosophy thinks, but without any of this sort of crazy solipsism that Rand is so fond of, the notion that people accomplish everything all in isolation. Emma Goldman understands that there’s a social element to even science, but she also writes that all history is a struggle of the individual against the institutions, which of course is what I’d always thought Republicans were saying, and so it goes.
In other words, in the Old Right, there were a lot of statements that seemed correct, and they appeal to you emotionally, as well; it was why I was a Republican—isolationist, anti-authoritarian positions, but they’re not illuminated by anything more than statement. They just are good statements. But in the writings of the anarchists the same statements are made, but with this long illumination out of experience, analysis, comparison…it's rock-solid, and so I immediately realised that I'd been stumbling around inventing parts of a tradition that was old and thoughtful and already existed, and that's very nice to discover that—I don't think it's necessary to invent everything.
Foreword (1984) to The Market for Liberty (1970)[edit]
The most interesting political questions throughout history have been whether or not humans will be ruled or free, whether they will be responsible for their actions as individuals or left irresponsible as members of society, and whether they can live in peace by volitional agreements alone.
The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should bepolitics.
Without the state there would be anarchy for that is, despite all the perfervid ravings of the MarxistLeft and statistRight, all that anarchy means—the absence of the state, the opportunity for liberty.
The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth. Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war. The history of nation states is written around the dates of war, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar.
The basic problem I really have is that whenever I meet leftists in the socialist and Marxist movements, I'm called a petit-bourgeoisindividualist. [audience laughs] I'm supposed to shrink after this— Usually I'm called petit-bourgeois individualist by students, and by academicians, who’ve never done a days work life [sic] in their entire biography, whereas I have spent years in factories and the trade unions, in foundries and auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word petit-bourgeois, I don't mind the word individualist at all!
I believe in individual freedom; that's my primary and complete commitment—individual liberty. That’s what it's all about. And that's what socialism was supposed to be about, or anarchism was supposed to be about, and tragically has been betrayed.
And when I normally encounter my so-called colleagues on the left—socialists, Marxists, communists—they tell me that, after the revolution, they're gonna shoot me. [audience laughs, Murray nods] That is said with unusual consistency. They're gonna stand me and Karl up against the wall and get rid of us real fast; I feel much safer in your company. [audience laughs and applauds]
Karl Hess is sitting next to Bookchin at the table.
At this point, it would be wise to pause in our narrative and ask ourselves: why was Karl Hess working for the Republican National Committee? Why was he writing speeches for conservativepoliticians and drawing paychecks from the biggest and most influential (at that time) of the conservative think tanks? … In effect, then, Hess was deceived by the libertarianrhetoric the GOP and its conservative sympathizers began using in the early 1930s, in a frantic attempt to distinguish themselves from the New DealDemocrats who were pursuing policies long associated with the Republican Party and calling them "liberal." It is doubtful, of course, that any Republican politician other than Ron Paul has ever taken that libertarian rhetoric seriously.
For Karl Hess, the awakening began in the early 1960s, when he was 40 years old,…for it was then that he began reading Ayn Rand. Before long,…the Randian influence was showing up unmistakably in the 1964 presidential campaign platform of the GOP, written by Hess, and the speeches delivered by the party's presidential nominee for that year, US Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, for whose campaign Hess served as chief speechwriter.
Meanwhile, he had met Murray Rothbard, and it wasn't long before he had put Objectivistminarchism behind him and moved on to Rothbardian anarchism. Under Rothbard's influence he began reading classic anarchist writers.
The Karl Hess of the early 1970s was most often found attired in fatigues, a field jacket, and combat boots. He rode a motorcycle. He gave up his affiliation with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute for an affiliation with the leftwing Institute for Policy Studies. He joined Students for a Democratic Society. He learned welding, worked professionally as a welder, and joined the Wobblies—the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World. He hung out with the Black Panthers. He started talking about "community" and about the concerns of "workers" and about the ways in which giant corporations, and the corporate lifestyle and the corporate mindset, menace and victimize ordinary, hardworking Americans.
By the mid '80s, he was, as Lennon and McCartney might say, back to where he once belonged. Hess began contributing to movement magazines like Bill Bradford's Liberty. He joined the Libertarian Party and spent three years as editor of the party's newspaper, the LP News. When he started writing his autobiography in the late '80s and early '90s, he chose to portray himself in pretty much the way I have done in this essay—as a lifelong libertarian who had, somewhat ironically, spent most of his life wandering around searching for his true politicalidentity and his true ideological home. It's good to know that, before his premature death from heart failure in 1994, he finally found both of them.
Hilly Kristal, birth name Hillel Kristal, (September 23, 1931–August 28, 2007) was an American club owner and musician who was the owner of the iconic New York City club, CBGB, which opened in 1973 and closed in 2006 over a rent dispute.
I felt originality was the most important thing in rock.[17]
When I saw there were more and more bands that just wanted to play their own music, and there was no place to play, I didn't say they could play [original music], I said they have to play it.Ibid.
Harry Edson Browne (17 June1933–1 March2006) was an American politician, libertarian writer and public speaker, and w:investment analyst.&bnsp; He was the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in the U. S. elections of 1996 and 2000. He was the author of 23[18] books that in total have sold more than 2 million copies and of thousands of articles, co-founder and Director of Public Policy of the libertarian Downsize DC Foundation, and host of two weekly network radio shows (The Libertarian Conversation and The Money Show) and of an eTV show (This Week in Liberty with Harry Browne).
Once its considered proper to use government force to solve one person's problem, force can be justified to solve anyone's problem.
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But coercion never produces harmony. How harmonious are people who are being forced to act against their will? Most likely, those who are coerced will resent those who benefit from the coercion. This sets group against group; it doesn't bring them together.
Page 24
They seem to think the government that can't stop violence in American cities can somehow bring peace to the rest of the world.
But one can support the newest foreign military adventures only by ignoring the wreckage left by all the previous military adventures.
Page 26
The government that's strong enough to give you what you want by taking it from someone else is strong enough to take everything you have and give it to someone else.
The government you want to suppress your enemies can be used as easily by your enemies to attack you.
Page 27
• A government that tries to help those who can’t help themselves will turn into a government that helps those with the most political power. • A government we try to use as our servant inevitably will become our master. • And a government formed to do for the people what they can't do so well for themselves will instead do to people what they don’t want done.
Page 32
Government doesn't work. That's the first lesson we must learn if we want to improve society.
Page 35
Politicians always justify the human tragedies [of war] as being necessary for the greater good. They speak movingly of giving one's life for one's country. But it's always someone else's life they're talking about.
…
The politicians' stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes averted from the reality of war—to make us imagine heroic young men marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and bringing peace and democracy to the world.
But war is something quite different from that.
It is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're even fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. It is your brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people—and to hate people who are just like themselves and who don't want to kill anyone either. It is your children seeing their buddies' limbs blown off their bodies.
It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the ones they love.
It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as your career means to you.
It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on other Americans and on people in other countries—taxes that remain long after the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the jailing of people who criticize the government.
It is the imposition of slavery by forcing young men to serve in the military
It is goading the public to hate foreign people and races—whether Arabs of Japanese or Cubans or Serbs. It is numbing our sensibilities to cruelties inflicted on foreigners.
It is cheering at the news of enemy pilots killed in their planes, of young men blown to bits while trapped inside tanks, of sailors drowned at sea.
Other tragedies inevitably trail in the wake of war. Politicians lie even more than usual. Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule rather than the exception. The press becomes even less reliable.
War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, and slavery.
War is the worst cruelty government can inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime—corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty—seem petty.
"A solution for the Middle East" (11 April 2002)[edit]
Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, "See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk."
"Why I Am Obsessed with War" (28 January 2005)[edit]
Troops don't sacrifice. Only individuals can sacrifice. For some of them, the sacrifice is a year out of their lives. For others, the sacrifice is in living for a year or more in constant fear and danger.
But for too many, the sacrifice is one's life. The loss of one's whole life.
That's not the same as giving a tenth of your income to the church, or working 15 hours a week in a soup kitchen, or spending a day a week helping out at a nursing home. When you sacrifice your life, you give up everything. The world has ended. What you were no longer exists. No more life, no more love, no more music, no more sports, no more breathing, no more interest in anything.
The dead are dead, and they can't come back. They won't dance at any inaugural balls—or even attend their alumni reunions. They won't attend presidential banquets—or even eat at the local coffee shop. Not ever again.
They are dead. And George Bush killed them. He killed them as certainly as though he personally had fired a rocket launcher at their homes.
I love life. I love my wife Pamela. I love being in love with her. I love the 19 years we've been playing house together—pretending we're grown-ups, just like our parents.
To have breakthroughs, you must have confidence in nonsense, okay? That's why only weird guys tend to have the breakthroughs: a sensible person won't have a breakthrough 'cause he writes it off real quickly as nonsense and, therefore, he doesn't ever do something that's nonsense.
Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan (born 17 June1943) is an American ærospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft, including the SpaceShipOne.
To have breakthroughs, you must have confidence in nonsense, okay? That's why only weird guys tend to have the breakthroughs: a sensible person won't have a breakthrough 'cause he writes it off real quickly as nonsense and, therefore, he doesn't ever do something that's nonsense.
"Inside the New Space Race," Space's Deepest Secrets (S2E17, first aired 5 September 2017, 9:07:01–9:07:19 PM EST).
As an organized force, American feminism can be dated from the radical anti-slavery movement, known as abolitionism, that arose in the early 1830s and coalesced around the libertarianWilliam Lloyd Garrison. Although there were many courageous women who advanced the status of women prior to this period, such as Anne Hutchinson and Frances Wright, they spoke out as individuals rather than as part of a self-conscious organization dedicated to women's rights.
Abolitionism demanded the immediate cessation of slavery on the grounds that every human being was a self-owner and had a moral jurisdiction over his or her own body. Gradually, abolitionist women began to apply the principle of self-ownership not only to the slaves, but also to themselves.Ibid.
If "war is the health of state," as Randolph Bourne claimed, then it is the death of individualism. At its roots, the individualist tradition is anti-statist, and war inevitably involves an increase in state power that never seems to roll back to prewar levels when peace resumes.Ibid.
Joseph Neil Schulman (born 16 April1953) is a novelist who wrote Alongside Night (published 1979) and The Rainbow Cadenza (published 1983) which both received the Prometheus Award, a libertarianscience fiction award. His third novel, Escape from Heaven, was also a finalist for the 2002 Prometheus Award. In addition, Schulman is the author of nine other books currently in print, including a short story collection, Nasty, Brutish, and Short Stories, Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns, and The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana.[3]
America is a fucking police state.People standing on escalators! And that is a testimony to human laziness! I mean, the guy who invented the escalator is just, probably, kicking himself in the ass. Do you think the guy made the escalator so people—and they're made like stairs—just so people stand on it so you go up and down? You're supposed to walk on 'em so you get there faster. You know? And then people stand on there.I'm a, what, an anarcho-capitalistsocialist…I don't know…I'm kinda a moderate, I think I'm moderate. … I mean I'm a gun-owning pacifist, so there you go.
I voted last week, and everything I voted for was defeated. I voted for less police station money and against adding more courtrooms. The guy I voted for, a congressman, lost big time because he's totally anti-military. He wanted to cut the CIAbudget! He's really cool. But he lost.
As quoted in "Take The Money and Run", Sounds (27 December 1990), interviewed by Keith Cameron on 23 September 1990[20]
As quoted in New Musical Express (12 November 1991)[21]
People standing on escalators! And that is a testimony to human laziness! I mean, the guy who invented the escalator is just, probably, kicking himself in the ass. Do you think the guy made the escalator so people—and they're made like stairs—just so people stand on it so you go up and down? You're supposed to walk on 'em so you get there faster. You know? And then people stand on there. So every time I'm on an escalator, I'm just like, "Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me…." You know? That's my pet peeve, right there. And I'm gonna do something about it, and I'm urging you to do something about it! Write your congressman, get a group together, get together, and—I think we can do something about this.
I do feel like, kinda like a misfit; usually I feel, inside, I'm a misfit. Like, I don't really watch sports, or a lot of…
1:46–1:55
It seems like our politics is so old, like, it almost seems like turning on the t.v. and there's ABC and CBS and NBC, and, y'know, there's like one newspaper in town, and so they're all pushing things on us, and that's all going away.
5:10–5:28
Nick Gillespie: So, um, how do you self-describe politically? Krist Novoselic: I'm a, what, an anarcho-capitalistsocialist…I don't know…I'm kinda a moderate, I think I'm moderate. Nick Gillespie: So you're an anarcho-capitalist socialist moderate. Krist Novoselic: I mean I'm a gun-owning pacifist, so there you go. I'm an anarcho-socialist—you know what I mean? Nick Gillespie: Anarcho-socialist— Krist Novoselic: —capitalist— Nick Gillespie: —capitalist, gun-toting… Krist Novoselic: Yeah, it's just like I, y'know, I just tryin'a, tryin'a make it work in this world and...basically I'm just a small-D democrat.
11:30–12:03
Well, I think it just goes back to the values that I grew up with in the punk rock world because it was this decentralised world, and so we just made our own way—like we'd be antigovernment or, you know—but we really didn't complain a lot; we were more action-oriented, like, people were publishing fanzines, we were setting up shows, we were getting in vans and touring around, and we were associating with other people, so…y'know, I just like that idea.
11:43–15:10, about the value of decentralisation
I don't think that corporations are these bigbogeymen that a lot of people paint them to be.
Yeah, I was a Democrat for about four or five years—active Democrat—and I thought I could reform the party; maybe I wasn't going about it right, maybe somebody can and somebody will, y'know? But I don't see it. It's just a top-down structure, it's a soft-money conduit, and, y'know, and like Nancy Pelosi, she's gonna lose the election again, and it's just like, what's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing—wrong, wrong thing—over and over again. Republicans, they have a real big demographic problem, because they're the party of oldwhite people, and they're not reaching out to folks.
20:00–20:38
Well, it was just—it seemed like it was violence, and, like, 'cause I went by some of the stores that, like, I don't really eat at McDonald's, y'know, but a lot of people do, and so there are these people who want, y'know, they're-they're socialists but they hatepeople, y'know, so they go trash the McDonald's, and I just think it was just reckless violence, and they weren't tryin'a accomplish anything, and they said—he was writing something on the wall, some kind of graffiti that was just stupid and cliché, and I said, "Hey, how would you like if someone did that to yourhouse?" and he yelled back, "Fuck you!" and these other people started yelling "Fuck you!" at me; I'm, like, "Oh," like "I'm in trouble."
Globalisation is a great thing, and the genie's out of the bottle; it's called the InformationRevolution. It has a promise to bring opportunity and information to all corners of the world. It's a wonderful thing.
29:41–29:55
If you hear a song you like, start dancing. That's what I do, I'll just start dancing, and that's it. That's all there is to it.
34:23–34:29
We weren't really interested in those bands; we were—because we came out of this subterranean scene. And then Nirvana breaks big, and it's just diametrically opposite: we have, like, facial hair, and just, kind of, logger shirts, but we're all, like, "sensitive" and "feminine"—you know what I mean?
36:00–36:19, about mainstream rockers of the 1980s
John Hamilton McWhorter V (1965–present) is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations.
At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.
As quoted in "Metal On The Rise," M.E.A.T (September 1991)[23]
Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth. And it happens every few minutes. The problem with groups who deal with rape is that they try to educate women about how to defend themselves. What really needs to be done is teaching men not to rape. Go to the source and start there.
As quoted in New Musical Express (12 November 1991)[24]
I would like to get rid of the homophobes, sexists, and racists in our audience. I know they're out there and it really bothers me.
Yeah, I was run out of town. They chased me up to the castle of Aberdeen with torches. Just like the Frankenstein monster. And I got away in a hot air balloon. And I came here to Seattle.
They're claiming that [the grunge bands] finally put Seattle on the map, but, like, what map? ...I mean, we had Jimi Hendrix. Heck, what more do we want?
From an interview with Marc Coiteux on Musique Plus, 1991-09-21, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
They (Extreme) surround themselves with these professional, dickhead, commercial rock and roll guys...when they show up at an airport, their manager runs ahead of them and yells at the people greeting them, "No video! We want a path straight to the van! We don't want any pictures taken!" Y'know, I'm like, "So what?"
Date unknown, but believed to be 1992-06-30 in Sweden[27]
Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I'll write a few sincere lines, and then I'll have to make fun of [them]. I don't like to make it too obvious, because if it is too obvious, it gets really stale. You shouldn't be in people's faces 100% all the time. We don't mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It's just the way I like art.
I don't feel the least bit guilty for commercially exploiting a completely exhausted Rock youth Culture because, at this point in rock history, Punk Rock (while still sacred to some) is, to me, dead and gone.
At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.
To be positive at all times is to ignore all that is important, sacred or valuable. To be negative at all times is to be threatened by ridiculousness and instant discredibility.
Page 18
I use bits and pieces of others [sic] personalities to form my own.
Linda & Morris Tannehill were two marriedlibertarianactivists and thinkers who lived in Lansing, Michigan in the early 1970s. In 1969, they published Liberty via the Market, but they are best known for their 1970 anarcho-libertarian classic, The Market for Liberty.
At some point after 15 May 1972, the two got divorsed.[4][5] Shortly after the divorce, Linda Tannehill reclaimed her maiden name, Locke.[5] In 1998, Morris Tannehill died of liver failure, according to a 1991 issue of Liberty magazine.[5] That said, the Laissez Faire Books publishing company claimed in 2008 that it had bought publishing rights from the Tannehills in 1994, making no note of Morris Tannehill's passing, and indeed insinuating that both authors were still alive enough to send correspondence and receive payments.[6] Either way, Per L. Bylund writes that Morris Tannehill was living in Jackson, Michigan at the time of his death.[7] Laissez Faire Books suggests the possibility that Linda remarried.[6]
Government effects the economy in three major ways—1) by taxation and spending, 2) by regulation, and 3) by control of money and banking. Taxation is economic hemophilia. It drains the economy of capital which might otherwise be used to increase both consumer satisfaction and the level of production and thus raise the standard of living. Taxing away this money either prevents the standard of living from rising to the heights it normally would or actually causes it to drop. Since productive people are the only ones who make money, they are the only ones from whom government can get money. Taxation must necessarily penalize productivity.
Some people feel that taxation really isn't so bad, because the money taken from the "private sector" is spent by the "public sector," so it all comes out even. But though government spends tax money, it never spends this legally plundered wealth the same way as it would have been spent by its rightful owners, the taxpaying victims. Money which would have been spent on increased consumer satisfaction or invested in production, creating more jobs and more products for consumers, may be used instead to subsidize welfare recipients, controlling their lives and, thus, discouraging them from freeing themselves in the only way possible—through productive labor. Or it may be used to build a dam which is of so little value to consumers and investors that it would never have been constructed without the force of government intervention. Government spending replaces the spending which people, if free, would do to maximize their happiness. In this way, government spending distorts the market and harms the economy as much or more than taxation.
If taxation bleeds the economy and government spending distorts it, governmental regulation amounts to slow strangulation. If a regulation requires businessmen to do what consumer desires would have caused them to do anyway, it is unnecessary. If it forces businessmen to act against consumer desires (which it almost always does), it harms the businessman, frustrates the consumer, and weakens the economy—and the confused consumer can usually be propagandized into blaming the businessman. By forcing businessmen to act against consumer desires, government regulation increases the cost of the regulated products (which, in our present economy, includes just about everything) and so lowers living standards for everyone and increases poverty.
The belief that the people of a democracy rule themselves through their elected representatives, though sanctified by tradition and made venerable by multiple repetitions, is actually mysticalnonsense. In any election, only a percentage of the people vote. Those who can't vote because of age or other disqualifications, and those who don't vote because of confusion, apathy, or disgust at a Tweedledum-Tweedledummer choice can hardly be said to have any voice in the passage of the laws which govern them. Nor can the individuals as yet unborn, who will be ruled by those laws in the future. And, out of those who do "exercise their franchise," the large minority who voted for the loser are also deprived of a voice, at least during the term of the winner they voted against.
But even the individuals who voted and who managed to pick a winner are not actually ruling themselves in any sense of the word. They voted for a man, not for the specific laws which will govern them. Even all those who had cast their ballots for the winning candidate would be hopelessly confused and divided if asked to vote on these actual laws. Nor would their representative be bound to abide by their wishes, even if it could be decided what these "collective wishes" were. And besides all this, a large percentage of the actual power of a mature democracy, such as the U.S.A., is in the hands of the tens of thousands of faceless appointed bureaucrats who are unresponsive to the will of any citizen without special pull.
Under a democratic form of government, a minority of the individuals governed select the winning candidate. The winning candidate then proceeds to decide issues largely on the basis of pressure from special-interest groups. What it actually amounts to is rule by those with political pull over those without it. Contrary to the brainwashing we have received in government-run schools, democracy—the rule of the people through their elected representatives—is a cruel hoax!
Not only is democracy mystical nonsense, it is also immoral. If one man has no right to impose his wishes on another, then ten million men have no right to impose their wishes on the one, since the initiation of force is wrong (and the assent of even the most overwhelming majority can never make it morally permissible). Opinions—even majority opinions—neither create truth nor alter facts. A lynch mob is democracy in action. So much for mob rule.
[Government] attracts the worst kind of men to its ranks, shackles progress, forces its citizens to act against their own judgment, and causes recurring internal and external strife by its coercive existence. In view of all this, the question becomes not, "Who will protect us from aggression?" but "Who will protect us from the governmental 'protectors'?" The contradiction of hiring an agency of institutionalized violence to protect us from violence is even more foolhardy than buying a cat to protect one's parakeet.
A private defense service company, competing in an open market, couldn’t use force to hold onto its customers—if it tried to compel people to deal with it, it would compel them to buy protection from its competitors and drive itself out of business. The only way a private defense service company can make money is by protecting its customers from aggression, and the profit motive guarantees that this will be its only function and that it will perform this function well.
…
Private defense service employees would not have the legal immunity which so often protects governmental policemen. If they committed an aggressive act, they would have to pay for it, just the same as would any other individual. A defense service detective who beat a suspect up wouldn't be able to hide behind a government uniform or take refuge in a position of superior political power. Defense service companies would be no more immune from having to pay for acts of initiated force and fraud than would bakers or shotgun manufacturers. (For full proof of this statement, see Chapter 11.) Because of this, managers of defense service companies would quickly fire any employee who showed any tendency to initiate force against anyone, including prisoners. To keep such an employee would be too dangerously expensive for them. A job with a defense agency wouldn't be a position of power over others, as a police force job is, so it wouldn't attract the kind of people who enjoy wielding power over others, as a police job does. In fact, a defense agency would be the worst and most dangerous possible place for sadists!
Government police can afford to be brutal—they have immunity from prosecution in all but the most flagrant cases, and their "customers" can't desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency. But for a free-market defense service company to be guilty of brutality would be disastrous. Force—even retaliatory force—would always be used only as a last resort; it would never be used first, as it is by governmental police.
Government is an artificial construct which, because of what it is, is in opposition to natural law. There is nothing in the nature of man which demands that he be governed by other men (if there were, then we would have to find someone to govern the governors, for they, too, would be men with a need to be governed). In fact, the nature of man is such that, in order to survive and be happy, he must be able to make his own decisions and control his own life…a right which is unavoidably violated by governments. The ruinous consequences of government's inescapable opposition to natural law are written in blood and human degradation across the pages of all man's history.
The belief that society couldn't be defended without a government also assumes that government does, indeed, protect the society over which it rules. But when it is realized that government really has nothing except what it takes by force from its citizens, it becomes obvious that the government can't possibly protect the people, because it doesn't have the resources to do so. In fact, government, without the citizens on whom it parasitizes, couldn't even protect itself! Throughout history, people have been talked into submitting to the tyrannies of their governments because, they were told, their government was vitally necessary to protect them from the even more terrible depredations of other governments. The governments, having put over this bit of propaganda, then proceeded to cajole and coerce their citizens into protecting them! Governments never defend their citizens; they can't. What they do is make the citizens defend them, usually after their stupid and imperialistic policies have aggravated or threatened another government to the point of armed conflict. Governmental protection against foreign aggression is a myth (but a myth which, sad to say, most people actually believe in).
…
Those who doubt that "the private sector" of the economy could sustain the expense of a free enterprise defense system would do well to consider two facts. First, "the public sector" gets its money from the same source as does "the private sector"—the wealth produced by individuals. The difference is that "the public sector" takes this wealth by force (which is legal robbery)—but it does not thereby have access to a larger pool of resources. On the contrary, by draining the economy by taxation and hobbling it with restrictions, the government actually diminishes the total supply of available resources. Second, government, because of what it is, makes defense far more expensive than it ought to be. The gross inefficiency and waste common to a coercive monopoly, which gathers its revenues by force and fears no competition, skyrocket costs. Furthermore, the insatiable desire of politicians and bureaucrats to exercise power in every remote corner of the world multiplies expensive armies, whose main effect is to commit aggressions and provoke wars. The question is not whether "the private sector" can afford the cost of defending individuals but how much longer individuals can afford the fearsome and dangerous cost of coerced governmental "defense" (which is, in reality, defense of the government, for the government…by the citizens).
Linda Locke, "Autobiographical Note: Freedom Now," Liberty 4, no. 4 (March 1991)
I live on the road, in a converted school bus that i fixed up myself (and very nice it is, too).
I've fallen in love with the area around Glenwood, New Mexico. The isolation, the scenery, the wilderness, and the independent-minded people all make it my kind of place.
As far as "history and memoirs," i think the only significant thing about me is that i stopped theorizing about a free society and instead devoted my energies to living as a free person. I opted out of the producer–consumer–taxpayer system in which most people are enmeshed—i refused to be a cog in the Establishment's machine. So i live wherever i want (in some of the most beautiful country there is) and come and go when i please. I have lots of free time because i work only enough to keep myself in necessities (and it's amazing how little is really necessary to one's comfort and happiness). I meet interesting people from many walks of life and have lots of friends. In short, i've spent the last couple of decades living the way i want to, and not the way i "have" to.
Many people tell me they envy my lifestyle and wish they could do it too. I tell them they can, if they can get free from the artificial "need" for material goods that leads to three forms of slavery: consumer slavery, wage slavery, and debt slavery. And most of them sigh, and keep on wishing. I can only conclude that freedom belongs to those with the courage to grasp it.
Morris and Linda Tannehill were two libertarian activists and thinkers who, in the early 1970s, made surprisingly profound advances in the theory of the stateless society.
Some great books are the product of a lifetime of research, reflection, and labored discipline. But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time when a new understanding brings in the world into focus for the first time.
The Market for Liberty is that second type of classic, and what a treasure it is. Written by two authors—Morris and Linda Tannehill—just following a period of intense study of the writings of both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, it has the pace, energy, and rigor you would expect from an evening's discussion with either of these two giants.
More than that, these authors put pen to paper at precisely the right time in their intellectual development, that period rhapsodic freshness when a great truth had been revealed, and they had to share it with the world. Clearly, the authors fell in love with liberty and the free market, and wrote an engaging, book-length sonnet to these ideas.
This book is very radical in the true sense of that term: it gets to the root of the problem of government and provides a rethinking of the whole organization of society.
Mises.org Updates, "That Fiery Classic," Mises Economics Blog, Ludwig von Mises Institute (23 May 2006)
Julian Paul Assange (born 1971) is an Australian journalist, programmer and Internet activist, best known for his involvement with Wikileaks, a whistleblower website.
This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life—wait a second—you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.
Can't we just give peace, love, anarchy, natural law, and a free market a chance?While the so-called progressive advocates regulation and centralised, domineering control in order to combat the ills of bigotry, the libertarian recognises that those tools can be just as easily harnessed to promote, enact, enforce, or reinforce bigotry. Thus the libertarian, by contrast, recognises that only free competition and free cooperation can be effectively wielded against the evils of bigotry. Or, to make it a bit more pithy, the so-called progressive gravitates toward the baton and the gun in fighting bigotry, while the libertarian gravitates to the handshake, realising that only the handshake can dismantle the paradigm of domination and exploitation and, in its stead, promote true mutual accord.
Lies are nothing new to politics. It's arguable that neoconservatives have lied to us on a regular basis on a variety of issues, ranging from foreign policy to the supposed destruction of the nuclear family, which they claim would result from allowing homosexuals the same rights held by heterosexuals. But in each of these cases, the lie's impact is diminished by a healthy level of scepticism. The most successful lie propagated by neoconservatives would have to be the conclusion that they are fiscal conservatives.
The libertarian and the so-called progressive agree that bigotry is socially harmful and undesirable, their only difference of opinion on the matter being how to resolve the problem. While the so-called progressive advocates regulation and centralised, domineering control in order to combat the ills of bigotry, the libertarian recognises that those tools can be just as easily harnessed to promote, enact, enforce, or reinforce bigotry. Thus the libertarian, by contrast, recognises that only free competition and free cooperation can be effectively wielded against the evils of bigotry. Or, to make it a bit more pithy, the so-called progressive gravitates toward the baton and the gun in fighting bigotry, while the libertarian gravitates to the handshake, realising that only the handshake can dismantle the paradigm of domination and exploitation and, in its stead, promote true mutual accord.
7 February 2014.
Emotion without reason is blind, destructiverage. Reason without emotion is mechanicalemptiness. It is true that emotion must always be tempered with reason, that emotion untempered by reason is inhuman. But, so too must it be said that reason without emotion is just as inhuman, for emotion is what gives reason its weight; without emotion, there can be no love for rationality, nor for liberty, nor justice nor humanity, nor for anything else that reason serves. Emotion gives reason emotional weight just as reason gives emotion reasonable direction.
Other than outright abolishing itself, the best thing the government can do to dramatically reduce the rate of violent crime is to end the war on guns, the war on drugs, and all military intervention. The war on guns succeeds only in disarming the innocent while simultaneously leaving criminals (who have no qualms circumventing the law) armed to the teeth. The war on drugs succeeds only in drawing young people away from education and into a life of gang warfare (while simultaneously undermining the safety of illicit drugs). And militarism subverts the morality of society by giving mass aggression, and thus aggression in general, the air of being a legitimate means to ends.
21 September 2014.
Tradition is good and virtuous whensoever it is on the side of liberty and justice. But whenever it is not, it is neither good nor virtuous.
The difference between the state and the tumour that grew inside of me is that my tumour never tried to convince me that I could not survive without it.
No socialist monopoly (which is what all government is, foundationally) can compete with private enterprise.
They will continue competing for each others' business in the voluntary free marketplace, each attempting to provide the best and widest array of services at the least expense. This is how capitalism does and is supposed to work.
These two statements actually come from an article by Alex R. Knight III called "Marx's Post Office", published by the Center for a Stateless Society on 26 March 2009.
The Tank Man, or the Unknown Protester, is the nickname of an anonymous male dissident who engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience by standing in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the CommunistChinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. The man achieved widespread international recognition due to the videotape and photographs taken of the incident despite censorship of the event by the Chinesegovernment. Although some have identified the man as Wang Weilin (王維林),[8][9], the real name has not been confirmed and little is known about him or of his fate after the confrontation that day. It is not even known whether this brave individual is alive. In April 1998, Time included the "Unknown Rebel" in a feature titled Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.[10]
Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you![10]
Go back! Turn around! Stop killing my people!
These two statements are frequently attributed to Tank Man on the Internet. While it seems clear from the footage that some communication occurred between Tank Man and the people in the front tank, no confirmation has ever been made as to what was actually spoken.
I personally believe that U. S. Americans are unable to [locate the U. S. on a world map] because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't havemaps and, uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should—our education over here in the U. S. should help the U. S., uh, or, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.
Aimee Teegarden: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U. S. on a world map. Why do you think this is? Caitlin Upton: I personally believe that U. S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't havemaps and, uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should—our education over here in the U. S. should help the U. S., uh, or, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.
We are pretty free in America when you compare us to other nations around the world, but we're not pretty free in America when you compare us to past generations.
If you look at the state of what's going on in America right now—and, y'know, in my book I chronicle easily a hundred different cases where government has overreached and encroached on Constitutional liberties of Americans—we're at the point now in America, a little girl can't run a lemonade stand in her driveway without having the local zoning zealots come in and fine her fifty dollars. We're at the point now where elementary schoolkids down in Georgia have their irises scanned as they board the bus—all in the name of "safety." We're at the point now where nebulous environmentallaws prevent homeowners from building a shed in their own back yard because there might be a flood plain issue in a hundred years.
This is the America where we're at, and I really implore people to read my book and tell me how we're not in a police state, because my research shows we're right on the cusp.
Interviewed by John Stossel, "The Riot Police", Stossel (21 August 2014), 9:08–9:09 PM ET
What's funny, if you look at the video of the National Guard and police, it's very difficult to tell the difference between who's who—who's the soldier tasked with serving and protecting for American security, who's the civilian police officer paid by taxpayers to protect, first and foremost, the citizen? And that, in itself, speaks volumes: when you can't tell the difference between the soldier versus the police officer on the scene—we have a problem.
Interviewed by John Stossel, "The Riot Police", Stossel (21 August 2014), 9:13 PM ET
Paul Detrick has been producing short documentaries at Reason TV since 2009 out of Los Angeles, California, and his work covers police militarisation, privacy, civil liberties, and the First Amendment. He's appeared on the BBC World Service, RT, and the Fox Business Network.
It really comes down to the militarisation of police there. … It's the mentality officers bring to the streets, that they can do anything in the middle of a disaster. And they just go after reporters, just clamping down on first-amendment rights—that's a first-amendment-right violation.
Interviewed by John Stossel, "The Riot Police", Stossel (21 August 2014), 9:50 PM ET
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
First Debate with Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858). Lincoln later quoted himself and repeated this statement in his first Inaugural Address (4 March 1861) to emphasize that any acts of secession were over-reactions to his election. During the war which followed his election he eventually declared the Emancipation Proclamation, pretending to free the slaves in those states over which he had no control, arguably as a war measure rather than as an entirely political or moral initiative.
While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
I give him [Judge Douglas] the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.
Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (18 September 1858).
I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of slavery.
Seventh and Last Joint Debate with Steven Douglas, at Alton, Illinois (15 October 1858).
"In course I did how was I to read it if I hadn't? all's fair in love and war, you know—the blessed Duke of Wellington served Bony so many a time, I'll be bound; besides, hadn't he opened Miss Clara's, the blackguard? Well, sir, I read it, and it's lucky as I did; oh! he's a bad un, he's a deal wickeder than Muster Richard hisself, and that's saying sumthing—it's from a Captain——"
"Really, Peter, I cannot avail myself of information obtained in such a manner," interrupted I.
"A Ray of Sunshine," Chapter XLIX of Frank Fairlegh; or, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil (London: A. Hall, Virtue, & Co., 25 Paternoster Row, 1850), p. 434.
The party takes over the function of what has been society—that is what I wanted them to understand. The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no licence, no free space, in which the individualbelongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper. It does not alter external conditions; no, it establishes the relation of the individual to the State, the national community. It does this with the help of one party, or perhaps I should say of one order.
The day of individualhappiness has passed. Instead, we shall feel a collective happiness. Can there be any greater happiness than a National Socialist meeting in which speakers and audience feel as one? It is the happiness of sharing. Only the early Christian communities could have felt it with equal intensity. They, too, sacrificed their personal happiness for the higher happiness of the community.
If we feel and experience this great era thus, then we shall not be disturbed by details and individual failures. We shall know then that every road leads us forward, no matter how much it seems to go in another direction. And above all, we shall then maintain our passionate desire to revolutionize the world to an extent unparalleled in history. It gives us also a special, secret pleasure to see how the people about us are unaware of what is really happening to them. They gaze fascinated at one or two familiar superficialities, such as possessions and income and rank and other outworn conceptions. As long as these are kept intact, they are quite satisfied. But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful socialforce has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socializehuman beings.
The most foolishmistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.
Adolf Hitler, dinner talk (11 April 1942), in Hitler's Table Talk 1941–44: His Private Conversations, pp. 425-426.
Die Bormann Vermerke: Transcripts of Hitler's conversations (5 July 1941–30 November 1944), made under the supervision of Martin Bormann, published in the UK as Hitler's Table Talks (1953).
The harsh fact of the matter is, when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways, it takes a long time to—to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.
From a live telephone interview he gave to Paul W. Smith on his morning radio show (on Detroit WJR News/Talk 760, 22 March 2010), about ObamaCare legislation
Concerning the September 11 attacks. The following quotes were taken from: "Sermon_20010914.mp3". WBC Download Center. Westboro Baptist Church. September 14, 2001.
God hates America, and those calamities last Tuesday are none other than the wrath of God, smiting fag America... That wasn't any accident. That wasn't any coincidence. There's only America to blame for those tragedies.
God hates America, and God demonstrated that hatred to some modest degree only last Tuesday—sent in those bombers, those hellacious 767 Boeing bombers, and it was a glorious sight.
This evil nation has smeared fag feces blended with dyke—fag semen and dyke feces on the Bible!
The following quotes were taken from: "9/11: God's Wrath Revealed" WBC Video News. Westboro Baptist Church. September 8, 2006.
Thank God for 9/11. Thank God that, five years ago, the wrath of God was poured out upon this evil nation. America, land of the sodomite damned. We thank thee, Lord God Almighty, for answering the prayers of those that are under the altar.
We told you, right after it happened five years ago, that the deadly events of 9/11 were direct outpourings of divine retribution, the immediate visitation of God's wrath and vengeance and punishment for America's horrendous sodomite sins, that worse and more of it was on the way. We further told you that any politician, any political official, any preacher telling you differently as to the cause and interpretation of 9/11 is a dastardly lying false prophet, cowardly and mean, and headed for hell. And taking you with him! God is no longer with America, but is now America's enemy. God himself is now America's terrorist.
Same-sex marriage, by any name, civil union or otherwise, is the ultimate smashed-mouth in-your-face insult to God Almighty, and you think He's going to let England and America and the rest of this evil world get by with it? God Almighty has not joined fags in holy wedlock.
What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?
To Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the 1990s, on Bosnia, recounted in Madam Secretary (2003), p. 182.
Powell later wrote in his memoir, "I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board."
Lesley Stahl: We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.
Hugh, I know I shouldn't even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event—something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough—and slow enough—so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?
Hugh Shelton responded, "Why, of course we can. Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go."
Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and, um, be faithful in what happens.
My corn I take serious because it's my corn, and my potatoes and my tomatoes and fences I take note of because they're mine. But this war is not mine and I take no note of it!
I've got five hundred acres of good, rich dirt, here, and as long as the rains come and the sun shines, it'll grow anything I have a mind to plant. And we pulled every stump, and we cleared every field, and we done it ourselves without the sweat of one slave.
That might me so, Johnson, but these are my sons! They don't belong to the state. When they were babies, I never saw the state coming around with a spare tit! We never asked anything of the state, and never expected anything. We do our own living and thanks to no man for the right.
You run a sad kind of train, mister. It takes people away when they don't want to go, and won't bring them back when they're ready.
I'm not going to kill you. I want you to live. I want you to live to be an old man, and I want you to have many, many, many children, and I want you to feel about your children then the way I feel about mine now. And someday, when a man comes along and kills one of 'em, I want you to remember! Okay? I want you to remember.
There's nothing much I can tell you about this war. It's like all wars, I suppose. The undertakers are winning it. Oh, the politicians will talk a lot about the "glory" of it, and the old men'll talk about the "need" of it—the soldiers, they just want to go home.
John Bender, who hails from a broken family, is a high schooler with rebellious, confrontational, destructive, and criminal tendencies. He is one of the five high schoolers depicted in the 1985 film The Breakfast Club.
In this original incarnation, Harrison Bergeron is an intelligent, athletic fourteen-year-old who wishes to rule, or at least pretend fancifully to rule, over the people whose government has been unable to successfully keep him handicapped.
"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
"Even as I stand here—" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened—I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"
"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"
"Now—" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."
In this incarnation, Harrison Bergeron is a libertarian hero, an anarchist rebel who has escaped from prison and announces on T. V. to the viewing audience the horrors of statism. In the end, he is murdered by a political elite, but he intelligently ensures that it is done on live television so that all can see the guns of government.
My name is Harrison Bergeron. I am a fugitive, and a public threat. I am an abomination of the able. I am an exception to the accepted. I am the greatest man you have never known. And for the last six years, I have been held prisoner by the state—sentenced, without trial, to torture without end.
They…had hoped to destroy in me any trace of the extraordinary…but the extraordinary, it seems, was simply out of their reach.
So now I stand before you today, beaten, hobbled, and sickened…but, sadly, not broken. And I say to you, that if it is greatness we must destroy, then let us drag our enemy out of the darkness, where it has been hiding. Let us shine a light so, at last, all the world can see!
I foresee two possibilities. One: coming face-to-face with herself thirty years older would put her into shock and she'd simply pass out. Or two: the encounter could create a time paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the spacetime continuum and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localised, limited to merely our own galaxy.
In this incarnation, Ichabod Crane is an English professor who fought and died in the American Revolutionary War on the side of the revolutionary American secessionists. After dying in combat, his witch wife performs a spell that affords him the opportunity to return to life, which he does in the early twenty-first century. Thereafter, he discovers he is one of the two witnesses prophesied in the Bible, and that he and the other witness will have to endure seven tribulations.
What's insane is a ten-percent levy on baked goods. You do realise the Revolutionary War began on less than two percent—how is the public not flocking to the streets in outrage!? We must do something.
Sheriff Reyes, I have tried to cooperate, but this country was founded by men who fought for nothing if not individualliberty, forged by the blood of men who refused to bow to a tyrant's will, and as I stand in this public house of law and order, built to defend that very liberty, I declare: I'm well within my rights to be here.
Shelley Darlington is the main character in the 2008 film The House Bunny. She is a former Playboy bunny who becomes house mother for a sorority of misfits.
[in response to the question of for whom she was planning to vote] I'm not sure yet. I definitely won't listen to what Simon says. He is just so mean. I usually always agree with Paula and Randy.
[in response to a waiter asking if she was a Playboy bunny] No! Those girls are all boobs and no brains. I'm too busy in a library, reading books…with dust on them.
Death is the personification of death. The concept of Death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of recorded history. In English, Death is often given the name "the Grim Reaper" and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a blackcloak with a hood. In Jewish tradition, Death was referred to as the Angel of Life and Death (Malach HaMavet) or the Angel of Dark and Light stemming from the Bible and Talmudic lore. In many languages (including English), Death is personified in male form, while in others, it is perceived as a female character (for instance, in Slavic and Romance languages).
In this incarnation, Death is not a killer, but rather a self-described "result." He carries souls to the "conveyor belt of eternity" not out of malice but merely because it is his job to do so. He tries to focus on the colours around him to distract himself from the grieving of those "leftover humans" who remain alive. In this story, Death is the narrator; he tells his reader of a story about a girl he calls "the book thief," whose real name is Liesel Meminger.
First the colors.
Then the humans.
That's usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.
HERE IS A SMALL FACT You are going to die.
Where are my manners?
I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
I am all bluster— I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.
It probably had more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.
A mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clutching at a book.
I wanted to stop. To crouch down. I wanted to say:
"I'm sorry, child."
But that is not allowed.
I did not crouch down. I did not speak.
They fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.
AN OBSERVATION A pair of train guards. A pair of grave diggers. When it came down to it, one of them called the shots. The other did what he was told. The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?
There was something black and rectangular lodged in the snow. Only the girl saw it. She bent down and picked it up and held it firmly in her fingers. The book had silver writing on it.
In this incarnation, Death delivers very little information about himself, other than that he tries to avoid the living, but nevertheless found himself invariably interested in Liesel Meminger.
One small fact: You are going to die. Despite every effort, no one livesforever. Sorry to be such a spoiler. My advice is, when the time comes, don't panic. It doesn't seem to help.
I guess I should introduce myself properly, but then again, you'll meet me soon enough—not before your time, of course; I make it a policy to avoid the living.
When I finally caught up with Max Vandenburg's soul, it was this moment that haunted him the most. For leaving his mother. For feeling that awful, light-headed relief that he would live.
It's always been the same, the excitement and rush to war. I've met so manyyoungmen over the years who have thought they were running at their enemy, when the truth was, they were running to me.
The bombs were coming thicker now. It's probably fair to say that no one was able to serve the Führer as loyally as me.
Tyler Durden is a nihilist and a figment of the imagination of the narrator of the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club. In the end, the narrator comes to realise that Tyler Durden is really nothing more than a manifestation of himself.
Narrator: One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
Edward is a kind, artistic person created by an eccentric engineer and cookie producer who died before Edward was finished. As such, Edward still has scissors where his hands would eventually have been.
In this incarnation, God, who prefers to go by the name Chuck Shurley, is the creator of all creation and an author. He has been described by his sister as Light and He has described himself as Being. Although He was interventionist with his creation early on, He has been fairly laissez-faire with it for the past couple millennia.
Metatron: Why did You create life? Chuck: I was lonely. Metatron: Your sister wasn't company enough? Chuck: I am being. She's nothingness.
Metatron: They do like blowing stuff up. Chuck: Yeah. And the worst part: they do it in my name. And then they come crying to me, asking me to forgive, to fix things—never taking any responsibility. Metatron: What about Your responsibility? Chuck: I took responsibility…by leaving. At a certain point, training wheels got to come off. No one likes a helicopter parent.
Believe me, I was hands-on—real hands-on—for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautifulcreatures that I created would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting; it's enabling.
Donatello: Uh…I-I-I guess You know that I was an atheist until ten minutes ago. Is that an issue? Chuck: Not for me. I mean, Ibelieve in me, but your scepticism is to be expected: I did include free will in the kit.
I'm dying. And when I'm gone, a cosmic balance between light and dark—it's over.
Chuck: I mean, look. Y-you've got darkness and light. Y-you take one side away a-and— Castiel: It upsets the scales, the whole balance of the universe.
Del Griffith is a travelling shower curtain ring salesman in the 1987 American comedy film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, whose wife, Marie, died eight years prior to the setting of the film.
You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right. I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me. I'm not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.
In this incarnation, Captain James Hook docks his brig in the Never Never Land where he searches for Peter Pan in order to exact his vengeance. Although the play was originally written in 1904, it wasn't published until 1928, and it was published with changes, e.g., the land is called the Never Land, not the Never Never Land.
In this incarnation, Killian Jones is the pirate captain of the Jolly Roger whose left hand is sliced off by Rumpelstiltskin in order to obtain a magicbean as well as in retaliation for Jones having won Milah's (Rumpelstiltskin's wife's) love. He replaces his lost hand with a hook, thereby gaining the nicknames Hook and Captain Hook, and seeks to avenge the death of his beloved. He has a penchant for drinkingrum.
Illyria, also known as Illyria the Merciless, is an Old One, an ancient race of dæmons pure, older than the concept of time, that plagued the world before the advent of man and warred as we would breathe. A great monarch and leader of the Army of Doom, Illyria was one of the most feared and worshipped in that epoch. It first appears in "A Hole in the World," an episode of Angel (S5E15, 25 February 2004).
Your leader has been corrupted. [Spike comments] It always begins the same: A rulerturns a blind eye to the dealings of battles from which he cannot gain and a deaf ear to the counsel of those closest to him. As his strength increases, so the the separation between him and his follow—
I willfight. I've been broken and humiliated. I will return in kind every blow, every sting. I will shred my adversaries, pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilatedfaces.
In this incarnation, the Joker, whose real name is Jack Napier, is an an member of an organised crime syndicate who becomes disfigured after falling into a vat of chemical waste that causes his skin to turn chalk white, his hair and nails to turn emerald green, and his mouth to display a permanent, wide, ruby-red grin. In addition to being a psychotic nihilist, he is extremely intelligent, with an expertise in chemistry and art.
In this incarnation, the Joker's real name is unknown. His clothing is homemade. And his mouth is scarred, having been cut at the edges into the shape of a ghastly grin. He is a cunning and often-unpredictable villain, a psychopathicterrorist. He is driven by his desire to prove that nothing matters, and is, in that sense, a militant nihilist.
Here's my card.
You wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker…and a fiend. And one night, he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that, notonebit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me, and he says, "Why so serious?" He comes at me with the knife—"Why so serious?" He sticks the blade in my mouth—"Let's put a smile on that face!"
Well, you look nervous. Is it the scars? You wanna know how I got 'em? Come here—hey, look at me. So, I had a wife who—beautiful, like you—who tells me I worry too much, who tells me I oughtta smile more, who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks. Hey. One day, they carve her face. We have no money for surgeries. She can't take it. I just want to see her smile again. Hmm? I just want her to know that I don't care about the scars. So, I stick a razor in my mouth and do this…to myself. And you know what? She can't stand the sight of me! She leaves. Now, I see the funny side. Now, I'm always smiling.
Don't talk like one of them; you're not!—even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out—like a leper. See, their morals, their "code"…it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show ya: When the chips are down, these, uh…these "civilised" people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster; I'm just ahead of the curve.
The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.
You're all prisoners. What you call sanity is just a prison in your mind that stops you from seeing that you're just tiny, little cogs in a giant, absurd machine. Wake up!! Why be a cog when you can be free like us? Just remember, smile.
John Locke (not to be confused with John Locke above) was a Regional Collections Supervisor for the Tustin Box Company. Along with others, he finds himself lost on a mysteriousisland after Oceanic Flight 815 crashes.
Lucifer, also known as Lucifer the Light Bearer or the morning star, is an archangel and was God's most belovedcreation until he fell from grace, expelled from Heaven by the archangel Michael. As a fallen angel, he took a third of the angels with him, and is now known as Satan, meaning the adversary, the devil, or the accuser. He is regarded as the primary embodiment and/or prime source of evil in the universe, and the ruler of Hell. He is popularly represented as a serpent and is sometimes called the Great Deceiver, the tempter, and even the Prince of Darkness. He has also gone by the name Mr. Scratch.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
How you have fallen from the heavens, O Morning Star, son of the dawn! How you have been cut down to the earth, you who conquered nations!
13
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
In your heart you said: “I will scale the heavens; Above the stars of God I will set up my throne; I will take my seat on the Mount of Assembly, on the heights of Zaphon.
14
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will be like the Most High!”
15
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
No! Down to Sheol you will be brought to the depths of the pit!
In this incarnation, Lucifer is singing to someone with whom he has fallen in love. Lyricist Geezer Butler has said that "the song was about the devil falling in love and totally changing, becoming a good person."[11]
Some people say my love cannot be true Please believe me, my love, and I'll show you I will give you those things you thought unreal The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal
You are the first to have this love of mine Forever with me 'till the end of time
Now I have you with me, under my power Our love grows stronger now with every hour Look into my eyes, you'll see who I am My name is Lucifer, please take my hand
In this incarnation, the devil goes by the name of Harry O. Tophet. He looks and sounds just like God, but he dresses much snazzier, and his license plate says "HOT".
In this incarnation, Lucifer had been trapped in Hell for æons until Sam Winchester accidentally released him. He aims to possess Sam's body in order to engage in a final battle on Earth with his brotherMichael, who in turn must possess Sam's brother's body, the body of Dean Winchester. The catch is that angels, and even archangels like Lucifer and Michael, can only possess human vessels with the permission of the vessel.
Sam Winchester: You need my consent? Lucifer: Of course, I'm an angel. Sam Winchester: I will kill myself before letting you in. Lucifer: And I'll just bring you back.
Lucifer: You don't have to be afraid of me, Dean. What do you think I'm going to do? Dean Winchester: I don't know—maybe deep-fry the planet? Lucifer: Why? Why would I want to destroy this stunning thing? Beautiful, in a trillion different ways. The last perfect handiwork of God. You ever hear the story of how I fell from Grace? … You know why God cast me down? Because I loved Him—more than anything. And then God created… [smirks] you: the little, hairless apes. And then he asked all of us to bow down before you. To love you more than Him. And I said, "Father…I can't." I said, "These human beings are flawed. Murderous." And for that, God had Michael cast me into Hell. Now tell me, does the punishment fit the crime? Especially when I was right. Look what six billion of you have done to this thing. And how many of you blame me for it.
I was a son. A brother, like you, a younger brother, and I had an older brother who I loved—idolised, in fact. And one day I went to him and I begged him to stand with me, and Michael…Michael turned on me. Called me a freak. A monster. And then he beat me down—all because I was different, because I had a mind of my own.
Gabriel: Lucifer, you are my brother, and I love you, but you are a great big bag of dicks. Lucifer: What did you say to me? Gabriel: Look at yourself. "Boo hoo, Daddy was mean to me, so I'm gonna smash up all his toys." Lucifer: Watch your tone. Gabriel: Play the victim all you want, but you and me, we know the truth. Dad loved you best, more than Michael, more than me. Then he brought the new baby home and you couldn't handle it. So all of this is just a great big temper tantrum. Time to grow up.
In this incarnation, Satan—who describes himself as "the Devil you know and many you don't"—is the ruler of Hell. He is keen on making deals in order to obtain souls.
Ησίοδος, Θεογονία, in Alois Rzach (ed.), Hesiodi Carmina (Leipzig: B.G. Teubneri, 1908), pp. 1–50.
Ησίοδου Θεογονία, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica: With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920; orig. 1914), pp. 78–154.
Hesiod (tr. Thomas Cooke), "The Theogony, or The Generation of the Gods," in "The Theogony of Hesiod, Translated by Cooke," in English Translations, From Ancient and Modern Poems, By Various Authors Vol. II (London: 1810), pp. 763–773.
Hesiod (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White), The Theogony of Hesiod, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica: With an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, M.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920; orig. 1914), pp. 79–155.
Aurora brought to great Astræus forth The West, the South-wind, and the rapid North; The morning-star, fair Lucifer, she bore, And ornaments of Heav'n, ten thousand more.
And Eos bare to Astraeus the strong-hearted winds, brightening Zephyrus, and Boreas, headlong in his course, and Notus,—a goddess mating in love with a god. And after these Erigeneia bare the star Eosphorus (Dawn-bringer), and the gleaming stars with which heaven is crowned.
Formerly a student at Highland High School, she currently attends Lawndale High School in this spin-off series, having moved to Lawdale with her family, the Morgendorffers.
In Virgil's Æneid, Laocoön was a priest of Poseidon (or Neptune for the Romans), who was killed with both his sons after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear.
Nada is a working class drifter who, through use of special sunglasses, discovers that everyone in society is a "victim of alien mind control, that aliens are altering human consciousness without the consent of their victims."[12]
In this incarnation, Peter Pan lives in the Never Never Land with the Lost Boys. Although the play was originally written in 1904, it wasn't published until 1928, and it was published with changes, e.g., Peter's home is called the Never Land, not the Never Never Land.
[W]hen the first babylaughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
Britta Perry, born in October 1982 and of Swedish descent, is a politically interested and socially empathetic student at Greendale Community College. Her political persuasions lean anarchist.
He's stopped crying. [To Estragon.] You have replaced him as it were. [Lyrically.] The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. [He laughs.] Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. [Pause.] Let us not speak well of it either. [Pause.] Let us not speak of it at all. [Pause. Judiciously.] It is true the population has increased.
Page 24
I'd very much like to sit down, but I don't quite know how to go about it.
William Pratt, better known by his nicknames Spike and William the Bloody, is an Englishvampirepoet. Born circa 1850 to 1853 to Anne Pratt, he was sired in 1880 by Drusilla. During his many decades as a vampire, he faced and killed two slayers, gaining for himself a reputation for evil and bloodshed. He is also very perceptive. He first appeared in "School Hard," an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S2E3, 29 September 1997), having come to Sunnydale in order to add a third slayer to his roster.
Optimus Prime (formerly Orion Pax) is a member of a species of autonomousroboticorganisms with synthetic intelligence from the planet Cybertron. He is able to transform into a Kenworth K100 cab over truck and is the de facto leader of the Autobots from the Transformers franchise. He first appeared in "More Than Meets the Eye," the miniseries pilot to The Transformers (September 1984).
Vanellope von Schweetz is a character in the 2012 animated film Wreck-It Ralph. She is both a tomboyish princess and a racer in the game Sugar Rush Speedway, although she aims to dispense with monarchical rule in favour of a constitutionaldemocracy. Her character also tends to glitch, which she sometimes uses to her advantage.
In this incarnation, Splinter was born an ordinary rat in Japan, where he lived as a pet of his Master Yoshi, and only grew into a talking, humanoid, ratlike creature upon coming in contact in the New York sewers with a strange, glowing ooze.
In this film, Doctor Ray Stantz, along with Doctors Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler, form a small business to capture unwanted ghosts.
Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.
Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody.
Book One, Chapter Three, page 26
They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But that's not the real you. That's not who you are inside.
Book One, Chapter Three, page 29
Admirable concern, commander. Yet it's deuced odd, isn't it? How you can show so much concern for porcelain and plastic…and show so little for flesh and blood. Do you remember, commander? Do you remember when it was people gathered in this sordid little enclosure? People half dead with starvation and dysentery?
Book One, Chapter Four, page 33
Hello, dear lady. A lovely evening, is it not? Forgive me for intruding. Perhaps you were intending to take a stroll. Perhaps you were merely enjoying the view. No matter. I thought that it was time we had a little chat, you and I. Ahh…I was forgetting that we are not properly introduced. I do not have a name. You can call me V. Madam Justice…this is V. V…this is Madam Justice. Hello, Madam Justice. "Good evening, V." There. Now we know each other. Actually, I've been a fan of yours for quite some time. Oh, I know what you're thinking… "The poor boy has a crush on me…an adolescent infatuation." I beg your pardon, Madam. It isn't like that at all. I've long admired you…albeit only from a distance. I used to stare at you from the streets below when I was a child. I'd say, to my father, "Who is that lady?" and he'd say, "That's Madam Justice." And I'd say, "Isn't she pretty." Please don't think it was merely physical. I know you're not that sort of girl. No, I loved you as a person. As an ideal. That was a long time ago. I'm afraid there's someone else now… "What? V! For shame! You have betrayed me for some harlot, some vain and pouting hussy with painted lips and a knowing smile!" I, Madam? I beg to differ! It was your infidelity that drove me to her arms! Ah-ha! That surprised you, didn't it? You thought I didn't know about your little fling. But I do. I know everything! Frankly, I wasn't surprised when I found out. You always did have an eye for a man in uniform. "Uniform? Why, I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. It was always you, V. You were the only one…" Liar!Slut!Whore! Deny that you let him have his way with you, him with his armbands and jackboots! Well? Cat got your tongue? Very well. So you stand revealed at last. You are no longer my Justice. You are his Justice now. You have bedded another. Well, two can play at that game! "Sob! Choke! Wh-who is she, V? What is her name?" Her name is Anarchy. And she has taught me more as a mistress than you ever did! She has taught me that justice is meaningless without freedom. She is honest. She makes no promises and breaks none. Unlike you, Jezebel. I used to wonder why you could never look me in the eye. Now I know. So goodbye, dear lady. I would be saddened by our parting even now, save that you are no longer the woman that I once loved. Here is a final gift. I leave it at your feet.
The flames of freedom. How lovely. How just. Ahh, my precious Anarchy… "O beauty, 'til now I never knew thee."
Book One, Chapter Five, pages 39–41
It's a quotation. A motto…"Vi veri veniyersum vivus vici." "By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe." Latin.
Book One, Chapter Six, page 43
It was you!You who appointed these people! You who gave them power to make your decisions for you! … You have accepted without question their senseless orders.
You're in a prison, Evey. You were born in a prison. You've been in a prison so long, you no longer believe there's a world outside.
Book Two, Chapter Thirteen, page 170
No. This is only the Land of Take-What-You-Want. Anarchy means "without leaders"; not "without order." With anarchy comes an age of ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order. This age of ordnung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course. This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos.
Book Three, Chapter Two, page 195
…And romance. Always, always romance.
Book Three, Chapter Five, page 219
Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bullet-proof.
In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness! [He broods.]
Page 71
Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? [Estragon, having struggled with his boot in vain, is dozing off again. Vladimir looks at him.] He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. [Pause.] Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in a hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on his forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. [He listens.] But habit is a great deadener. [He looks again at Estragon.] At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. [Pause.] I can't go on! [Pause.] What have I said?
This is Wonka's response to Veruca Salt questioning the credibility of snozzberries. Here, Wonka is quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "Ode," Music and Moonlight (1874), lines 1–2 (stanza 1).
With a taste of your lips I'm on a ride You're toxic, I'm slipping under With a taste of a poison paradise I'm addicted to you Don't you know that you're toxic
En Vogue is an American R&B girl group formed in Oakland, California in 1989 whose original line-up consisted of Terry Ellis, Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones. Jones left the group in 2001 and was replaced by Amanda Cole; however, in 2003, Cole left and was replaced by Rhona Bennett. The original members united in 2005 and reunited again in 2009, after which point Robinson and Jones departed from the group to pursue solo careers, with Bennett rejoining the group as a trio.
Everclear is a post-grunge rock band formed in Portland, Oregon, in 1992. It has been noted for its humorous-cum-emotional lyrics which often provide a modern-day political commentary.
Father of mine, Tell me, what do you see When you look back at your wasted life And you don't see me?
I will never be safe I will never be sane I will always be weird inside I will always be lame Now I am a grownman With a child of my own And I swear I'm not going to let her know All the pain I have known!
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