“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.”

— Glen Cook

Source: Chronicles of the Black Company

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Glen Cook 205

American fiction writer 1944

Roger Lewis (1960) Welsh academic and biographer

Of rival candidate for the Oxford Chair of Poetry Michael Horovitz.
Evening Standard, Mon 31 Oct 2011, p16

“I would like to stress how ruthless these self-proclaimed psychics are. They have absolutely no regard for their fellow human beings.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

Introducing Psychic-Busting Private Eye Bob Nygaard (Part 2) https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/introducing_psychic-busting_private_eye_bob_nygaard_part_2, CSI Online (22 August 2018)

“Ascribing human brotherhood, social justice, world peace, self-sacrifice and compassion to Christianity and Islam is tantamount to proclaiming that the wolf is a votary of vegetarianism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)

“Truth is a well-known pathological liar. It invariably turns out to be Fiction wearing a fancy frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest.”

Alan Moore book From Hell

In "Correspondence: From Hell" Alan Moore & Dave Sim, part 3, Cerebus #219, (2003)
Context: Truth is a well-known pathological liar. It invariably turns out to be Fiction wearing a fancy frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest. You can tell this, because it comes right out and says, "I'm a Liar," right there on the dust jacket.

“Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked— and where are they?”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

V, st. 3
The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/

“Philosophy can never reconcile itself with science. Science aims at self-evident truths and finds in them that "natural necessity" which, after having proclaimed itself for ever eternal, claims to serve as the foundation of all knowledge and strives to rule over all wanton "suddenly."”

Lev Shestov (1866–1938) Russian theologian

But philosophy has always been, and will always be, a fight with and a conquest of self-evident truths; philosophy is not looking for any "natural necessity", it sees in naturalness and in necessity alike an evil magic, which, if one cannot quite shake it off (for in this no mortal has ever yet succeeded), yet one must at least call by its right name; and even this is an important step! p. 342
Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, Words That Are Swallowed Up - Plotinus's Ecstasies