Interview by Alec Mouhibian in The Free Radical (November 2004) http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Mouhibian/Nathaniel_Branden_Interview,_Pt_3.shtml
Context: One of the mistakes that Rand makes is that after she condemns a belief or an action, she goes on to tell you the psychology of the person who did it, as if she knows. I focus my judgment on the action and not on the person. My primary interest is: do I admire or dislike this behavior? And there, judgment is important for me. People often attribute all kinds of things to another person, without ever knowing where that person’s coming from. Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative.
“In a rude state of society all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.”
Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
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Charles Lyell 103
British lawyer and geologist 1797–1875Related quotes
“Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.”
The Garden (1650-1652)
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: To begin with, if man, since his origin, has always lived in societies, the State is but one of the forms of social life, quite recent as far as regards European societies. Men lived thousands of years before the first States were constituted; Greece and Rome existed for centuries before the Macedonian and Roman Empires were built up, and for us modern Europeans the centralized States date but from the sixteenth century. It was only then, after the defeat of the free mediæval Communes had been completed that the mutual insurance company between military, judicial, landlord, and capitalist authority which we call "State," could be fully established.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Note I : Hâjî Abdû, The Man
Context: The "Schedule of Doctrines" of the most liberal Christian Church insists upon human depravity, and the "absolute need of the Holy Spirit's agency in man's regeneration and sanctification."
But what have we here? The "original calamity" was either caused by God or arose without leave of God, in either case degrading God to man. It is the old dilemma whose horns are the irreconcilable attributes of goodness and omniscience in the supposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be predicable, the other cannot be predicable of the same subject. Far better and wiser is the essayist's poetical explanation now apparently despised because it was the fashionable doctrine of the sage bard's day:—
Words on being presented with a Bible, as reported in the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle (8 September 1864)
1860s
“Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness”
1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Context: Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.
“Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.”
Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973)
“No man has yet appreciated all that is involved in Jesus' teaching regarding God.”
Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 43