“Freedom and idiots make a volatile mix. And the sad truth is that the idiocy quotient in the general population is alarmingly high.”
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 59)
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Jack McDevitt125
American novelist, Short story writer 1935Related quotes
“The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.”
Shana Alexander (1925–2005) Journalist
The Feminine Eye (1970), p. 33
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, pp. xvii–xcviii (c. 1798–1809)
1790s
“The sad truth is that the truth is sad.”
Daniel Handler book The Carnivorous Carnival
Lemony Snicket
The Carnivorous Carnival (2002)
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint
Source http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Sunday, 8 October 1995 <br class="br">Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220416100400/https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Archived] from [https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html the original
Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger
The Reactionary Temptation (2017)
Context: We are living in an era of populism and demagoguery. And yes, there’s racism and xenophobia mixed into it. But what we are also seeing, it seems to me, is the manifest return of a distinctive political and intellectual tendency with deep roots: reactionism.
Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power.
“We never taste a perfect joy;
Our happiest successes are mixed with sadness.”
Pierre Corneille book Le Cid
Jamais nous ne goûtons de parfaite allégresse:
Nos plus heureux succès sont mêlés de tristesse.
Don Diègue, act III, scene v.
Le Cid (1636)
Ilana Mercer South African writer
"Anti-Federalists Prophesied the End of Freedom" http://www.americandailyherald.com/pundits/ilana-mercer/item/anti-federalists-prophesied-the-end-of-freedom, American Daily Herald, December 9, 2013. <br class="br">2010s, 2013
Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter
Quote in: 'Caspar David Friedrich's Medieval Burials', Karl Whittington - http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring12/whittington-on-caspar-david-friedrichs-medieval-burials <br class="br">undated