“If there were a generic one-word expression for 'one whose fear of the uncertainties of success moves him to surrender at the very moment of victory', it would be 'Republican.”
"Some New Tactical Reflections".
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L. Neil Smith 99
American writer 1946Related quotes
Declaration of Conscience (1950)
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.”
Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic (2006)
Context: For Spinoza, philosophy originates in the very personal... feeling of emptiness that in the philosophical tradition has earned the distinguished name of contemptu mundi, the contempt for worldly things, or, better, vanitas.... Spinoza says that... success in life is just a postponement of failure;... pleasure is just a fleeting respite from pain; and... the objects of our striving are vain illusions....
The feeling of vanitas Spinoza describes is... a dire encounter with the prospect of descent into absolute nothingness, a life without significance coming to a meaningless end.... The experience Spinoza records... establishes... the moment of extreme doubt, fear, and uncertainty that precedes the dawn of revelation.... the journey... is one trodden by poets, philosophers, and theologians too numerous to mention, who for millennia have recorded this feeling that life is a useless passion, a wheel of ceaseless striving, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and so on.<!--pp. 55-56
“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring.”
Interview (30 October 1982) in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)
Context: I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
As quoted in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1904) by George Francis Robert Henderson http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12233, Ch. 25 : The Soldier and the Man, p. 481
Context: War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.