
Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/947823304500490242 (1 January 2018)
2018
Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/947823304500490242 (1 January 2018)
2018
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity
“Whenever you honor the honorable, you possess them. Whenever you honor the ignoble, they rebel.”
No. 13
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)
Context: Are riches, honors, and beauty going out of fashion? Is not the rage for them, on the contrary, increased faster than improvement in knowledge? As long as either of these are in vogue, will there not be emulations and rivalries? Does not the increase of knowledge in any man increase his emulation; and the diffusion of knowledge among men multiply rivalries? Has the progress of science, arts, and letters yet discovered that there are no passions in human nature? no ambition, avarice, or desire of fame? Are these passions cooled, diminished, or extinguished? Is the rage for admiration less ardent in men or women? Have these propensities less a tendency to divisions, controversies, seditions, mutinies, and civil wars than formerly? On the contrary, the more knowledge is diffused, the more the passions are extended, and the more furious they grow.
“To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.”
Die Menge nicht zu achten, ist sittlich; sie zu ehren, ist rechtlich.
Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), “Athenaeum Fragments” § 211