Jan Hus photo
Jan Hus photo

“Even a most evil man is better than the devil!”

Jan Hus (1369–1415) Czech linguist, religion writer, theologist, university educator and science writer

Source: A Companion to Jan Hus (2015), pp. 201-202; Jan Hus in Booklet against the Cook-priest in response to the rival priest who swore that Hus is worse than any devil.

Brigitte Bardot photo
Sacha Guitry photo

“When a man steals your wife there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.”

Sacha Guitry (1885–1957) French dramatist and playwright

Book of Humorous Quotations, ed. Connie Robertson (1998), page 83

Lady Gaga photo
Lady Gaga photo

“I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Bad Romance, written by Lady Gaga and RedOne
Song lyrics, The Fame Monster (2009)

Lady Gaga photo

“In my show I announce, ‘People say Lady Gaga is a lie, and they are right. I am a lie. And every day I kill to make it true.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lady Gaga: How the world went crazy for the new queen of pop http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/lady-gaga-how-the-world-went-crazy-for-the-new-queen-of-pop-1684375.html

Lady Gaga photo

“I operate from a place of delusion-that’s what the Fame is all about… I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

. "The Rise of Lady Gaga." by Brian Hiatt, in Rolling Stone (11 June 2009): 57-61.

Maria Montessori photo

“The task of the educator of young children lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Attributed in The Encarta Book of Quotations (2000), edited by Bill Swainson, p. 662

Maria Montessori photo

“The teachers of the old school, prepared according to the principles of metaphysical philosophy, understood the ideas of certain men regarded as authorities, and moved the muscles of speech in talking of them, and the muscles of the eye in reading their theories. Our scientific teachers, instead, are familiar with certain instruments and know how to move the muscles of the hand and arm in order to use these instruments; besides this, they have an intellectual preparation which consists of a series of typical tests, which they have, in a barren and mechanical way, learned how to apply.
The difference is not substantial, for profound differences cannot exist in exterior technique alone, but lie rather within the inner man.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Source: The Montessori Method (1912), Ch. 1 : A Critical Consideration of the New Pedagogy in its Relation to Modern Science, p. 7.
Context: To prepare teachers in the method of the experimental sciences is not an easy matter. When we shall have instructed them in anthropometry and psychometry in the most minute manner possible, we shall have only created machines, whose usefulness will be most doubtful. Indeed, if it is after this fashion that we are to initiate our teachers into experiment, we shall remain forever in the field of theory. The teachers of the old school, prepared according to the principles of metaphysical philosophy, understood the ideas of certain men regarded as authorities, and moved the muscles of speech in talking of them, and the muscles of the eye in reading their theories. Our scientific teachers, instead, are familiar with certain instruments and know how to move the muscles of the hand and arm in order to use these instruments; besides this, they have an intellectual preparation which consists of a series of typical tests, which they have, in a barren and mechanical way, learned how to apply.
The difference is not substantial, for profound differences cannot exist in exterior technique alone, but lie rather within the inner man. Not with all our initiation into scientific experiment have we prepared new masters, for, after all, we have left them standing without the door of real experimental science; we have not admitted them to the noblest and most profound phase of such study, — to that experience which makes real scientists.

Thucydides photo

“That war is an evil is a proposition so familiar to every one that it would be tedious to develop it. No one is forced to engage in it by ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies there is anything to be gained by it.”

Book IV, 4.59-[2]; "Nobody is driven into war by ignorance, and no one who thinks that he will gain anything from it is deterred by fear." ( trans. http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/thucydides/thucydides-passages.php?pleaseget=4.59-64 Benjamin Jowett)
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book IV

Thucydides photo

“So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.”

Variant translation: "...the search for truth strains the patience of most people, who would rather believe the first things that come to hand." Translation by Paul Woodruff.
Book I, 1.20-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

John Lydon photo

“Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night!”

John Lydon (1956) English singer, songwriter, and musician

At the end of the last Sex Pistols concert, Winterland Theater, San Francisco, California (14 January 1978)

Orhan Pamuk photo

“I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
Orhan Pamuk photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo

“There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: "for reasons of state."”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Source: Rousseau's Theory of the State (1873)
Context: We … have humanity divided into an indefinite number of foreign states, all hostile and threatened by each other. There is no common right, no social contract of any kind between them; otherwise they would cease to be independent states and become the federated members of one great state. But unless this great state were to embrace all of humanity, it would be confronted with other great states, each federated within, each maintaining the same posture of inevitable hostility. War would still remain the supreme law, an unavoidable condition of human survival.
Every state, federated or not, would therefore seek to become the most powerful. It must devour lest it be devoured, conquer lest it be conquered, enslave lest it be enslaved, since two powers, similar and yet alien to each other, could not coexist without mutual destruction.
The State, therefore, is the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of humanity. It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on the earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest. It protects its own citizens only; it recognises human rights, humanity, civilisation within its own confines alone. Since it recognises no rights outside itself, it logically arrogates to itself the right to exercise the most ferocious inhumanity toward all foreign populations, which it can plunder, exterminate, or enslave at will. If it does show itself generous and humane toward them, it is never through a sense of duty, for it has no duties except to itself in the first place, and then to those of its members who have freely formed it, who freely continue to constitute it or even, as always happens in the long run, those who have become its subjects. As there is no international law in existence, and as it could never exist in a meaningful and realistic way without undermining to its foundations the very principle of the absolute sovereignty of the State, the State can have no duties toward foreign populations. Hence, if it treats a conquered people in a humane fashion, if it plunders or exterminates it halfway only, if it does not reduce it to the lowest degree of slavery, this may be a political act inspired by prudence, or even by pure magnanimity, but it is never done from a sense of duty, for the State has an absolute right to dispose of a conquered people at will.
This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue. It bears the name patriotism, and it constitutes the entire transcendent morality of the State. We call it transcendent morality because it usually goes beyond the level of human morality and justice, either of the community or of the private individual, and by that same token often finds itself in contradiction with these. Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enslave one's fellowman is ordinarily regarded as a crime. In public life, on the other hand, from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue. And this virtue, this duty, are obligatory for each patriotic citizen; everyone is supposed to exercise them not against foreigners only but against one's own fellow citizens, members or subjects of the State like himself, whenever the welfare of the State demands it.
This explains why, since the birth of the State, the world of politics has always been and continues to be the stage for unlimited rascality and brigandage, brigandage and rascality which, by the way, are held in high esteem, since they are sanctified by patriotism, by the transcendent morality and the supreme interest of the State. This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries — statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors — if judged from the standpoint of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labour or to the gallows. There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: "for reasons of state."

Mikhail Bakunin photo

“Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

"The Red Association" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/writings/ch05.htm (1870)