“Everyone thinks and imagines that life is easier on the other side. Their minds swing like a pendulum.”

The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field: The love affairs of a Bibliomaniac (1896), Ch. IV : The Mania of Collecting Seizes Me, p. 44
Context: Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play of fancy.

Source: Life of Pi

Anarchist Morality http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/AM/anarchist_moralitytc.html (1890) <br class="br">Context: The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her.<br>She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.<br>But the inveterate enemies of thought — the government, the lawgiver, and the priest — soon recover from their defeat. By degrees they gather together their scattered forces, and remodel their faith and their code of laws to adapt them to the new needs.

Source: The October Country

“A Palin Third-Party?” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=530 WorldNetDaily.com, January 15, 2010. <br class="br">2010s, 2010

Vol. 2 "Further Psychological Observations" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Lee Krasner, ‎Marcia Tucker, ‎Whitney Museum of American Art (1973) Lee Krasner: large paintings. Nr. 33. p. 8.