
“History teaches, but it has no pupils.”
Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.
Source: Ariel
“History teaches, but it has no pupils.”
Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.
Saying 15
Râmakrishna : His Life and Sayings (1898)
Context: The Master said: "Everything that exists is God." The pupil understood it literally, but not in the true spirit. While he was passing through a street, he met with an elephant. The driver (mahut) shouted aloud from his high place, "Move away, move away!" The pupil argued in his mind, "Why should I move away? I am God, so is the elephant also God. What fear has God of Himself?" Thinking thus he did not move. At last the elephant took him up by his trunk, and dashed him aside. He was severely hurt, and going back to his Master, he related the whole adventure. The Master said, "All right, you are God. The elephant is God also, but God in the shape of the elephant-driver was warning you also from above. Why did you not pay heed to his warnings?"
“What is liberal education,” p. 3
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
“This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.”
Source: The Angel's Game
7 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)
Context: The white races did, of course, give some things to the natives, and they were the worst gifts that they could possibly have made, those plagues of our own modern world-materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism and syphilis. For the rest, since these peoples possessed qualities of their own which were superior to anything we could offer them, they have remained essentially unchanged. Where imposition by force was attempted, the results were even more disastrous, and common sense, realizing the futility of such measures, should preclude any recourse to their introduction. One solitary success must be conceded to the colonizers: everywhere they have succeeded in arousing hatred, a hatred that urges these peoples, awakened from their slumbers by us, to rise and drive us out. Indeed, it looks almost as though they had awakened solely and simply for that purpose! Can anyone assert that colonization has increased the number of Christians in the world? Where are those conversions en masse which mark the success of Islam? Here and there one finds isolated islets of Christians, Christians in name, that is, rather than by conviction; and that is the sum total of the successes of this magnificent Christian religion, the guardian of supreme Truth! Taking everything into consideration, Europe's policy of colonization has ended in a complete failure.
“You shouldn't believe everything you hear you're young, not stupid.”
Source: The Wishsong of Shannara