“People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it.”

— Jacques Ellul

Source: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 37
Context: People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it. Thus from the moment that technics, the State, or production, are facts, we must worship them as facts, and we must try to adapt ourselves to them. This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it." by Jacques Ellul?

Jacques Ellul 125

French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarch… 1912–1994

Elvira Arellano (1975) Mexican illegal immigrant and activist

Tram Nguyen, "No Sanctuary: Elvira Arellano Deported Without Son," RaceWire: The Colorlines Blog (2007-08-20) http://www.racewire.org/archives/2007/08/immigrant_mother_elivira_arell.html

“When a judge decides a constitutional question, when he decides what the people as a whole can or cannot do, the people should have the right to recall that decision if they think it wrong.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)
Context: When a judge decides a constitutional question, when he decides what the people as a whole can or cannot do, the people should have the right to recall that decision if they think it wrong. We should hold the judiciary in all respect; but it is both absurd and degrading to make a fetish of a judge or of anyone else.

“I accept the people's will. As a revolutionary, I have no right to disregard the will of the people.”

François Duvalier (1907–1971) 40th President of the Republic of Haiti

Quoted in Elizabeth Abbott, Haiti: An insider's history of the rise and fall of the Duvaliers (1988), p. 103.

“It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision … You have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.”

John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States

Georgia vs. Brailsford http://www.friesian.com/jury.htm (1794)
1790s

“Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died — and that is a tragedy — I still believe that it was the right thing to do.”

Hazel Blears (1956) British politician

Regarding the decision to invade Iraq. "Monbiot meets... Hazel Blears," http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/video/2009/apr/25/monbiot-meets-hazel-blears The Guardian (2009-05-05)

“I do have a problem with the people who think they have some right to try to impose their beliefs on others.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: I'd like to clarify my comments about religious people being weak-minded. I didn't mean all religious people. I don't have any problem with the vast majority of religious folks. I count myself among them, more or less. But I believe because it makes sense to me, not because I think it can be proven. There are lots of people out there who think they know the truth about God and religion, but does anybody really know for sure? That's why the founding fathers built freedom of religious belief into the structure of this nation, so that everybody could make up their minds for themselves.
But I do have a problem with the people who think they have some right to try to impose their beliefs on others. I hate what the fundamentalist fanatics are doing to our country. It seems as though, if everybody doesn't accept their version of reality, that somehow invalidates it for them. Everybody must believe the same things they do. That's what I find weak and destructive.

“It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Freedom of the Press", unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)
Context: At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

“I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in My Love Affair with David Lynch and Peachy Like Nietzsche: Dark Clown Porn Snuff for Terrorists and Gorefiends (2005) by Jason Rogers, p. 7
Context: I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

“Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are.”

Karen Blixen book Seven Gothic Tales

"The Dreamers"
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
Context: The consolations of the vulgar are bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.

“People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it.”

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Jacques Ellul 125

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