Principles of Social Reconstruction [Originally titled Why Men Fight : A Method Of Abolishing The International Duel], Ch. VIII : What We Can Do, p. 257
1910s
Context: It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive possession, which will be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of impersonal justice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession, and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.
The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession.
“Nobly to live, or else nobly to die,
Befits proud birth.”
ἀλλ᾽ ἢ καλῶς ζῆν ἢ καλῶς τεθνηκέναι
τὸν εὐγενῆ χρή
Source: Ajax, Lines 479-480
“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”
Nemo quam bene vivat sed quam diu curat, cum omnibus possit contingere ut bene vivant, ut diu nulli.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXII: On the futility of half-way measures, Line 17.
Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 9
Source: The Perennial Philosophy
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Telecosm : How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World (2000), p. 31
Context: Let there be light, says the Bible. All the firmaments of technology, all our computers and networks, are built with light, and of light, and for light, to hasten its spread around the world. Light glows on the telescom's periphery; it shines as its core; it illuminates its webs and its links. From Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein to Richard Feynman and Charles Townes, the more men have gazed at light, the more it turns out to be a phenomenon utterly different from anything else. And yet everything else — every atom and every molecula — is fraught with its oscillating intensity.
“Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.”
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CI: On the Futility of Planning Ahead
“I just make crap up more than anything else.”
Ain't It Cool News interview
