Introduction.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Context: The essence of
MAGICK
is simple enough in all conscience. It is not otherwise with the art of government. The Aim is simply prosperity; but the theory is tangled, and the practice beset with briars.
In the same way
MAGICK
is merely to be and to do. I should add: "to suffer". For Magick is the verb; and it is part of the Training to use the passive voice. This is, however, a matter of Initiation rather than of Magick in its ordinary sense. It is not my fault if being is baffling, and doing desperate!
“We arrive at the point where we, looking over the hundred and twenty five years of independence, can see that the simple government conceived by the revolutionary republicans was a foredoomed failure. It was so because of: 1) the essence of government itself; 2) the essence of human nature; 3) the essence of Commerce and Manufacture.”
Anarchism & American Traditions (1908)
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Voltairine de Cleyre 78
American anarchist writer and feminist 1866–1912Related quotes
“Sculpture is the essence of things, the essence of nature, that which is perpetually human.”
As quoted in Expressionism (2004) by Norbert Wolf and Uta Grosenick, p. 64
Assorted Themes, On Form, Essence & Matter
Speech in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 2 December 1829, The Writings of James Madison: 1819-1836 (1910), ed. Galliard Hunt, p. 361
1820s
“The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.”
No. 13
1790s, Discourses on Davila (1790)
Context: Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist. But if unlimited or unbalanced power of disposing property, be put into the hands of those who have no property, France will find, as we have found, the lamb committed to the custody of the wolf. In such a case, all the pathetic exhortations and addresses of the national assembly to the people, to respect property, will be regarded no more than the warbles of the songsters of the forest. The great art of law-giving consists in balancing the poor against the rich in the legislature, and in constituting the legislative a perfect balance against the executive power, at the same time that no individual or party can become its rival. The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries. The executive and the legislative powers are natural rivals; and if each has not an effectual control over the other, the weaker will ever be the lamb in the paws of the wolf. The nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There is no other alternative. Rivalries must be controlled, or they will throw all things into confusion; and there is nothing but despotism or a balance of power which can control them.
The Desiring Machine
Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977)
As quoted in Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm (2009), "Linnaeus and homo religiosus," Universitet, p. 83.