“The discussion of any society risks seduction by what is transient and tumultuous.”
Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 5, Unstable America, p. 191
“A genuinely political society, in which discussion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks.”
Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 4, Socrates and After, p. 140
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Moses I. Finley17
American historian 1912–1986Related quotes
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat
The United States (1971)
Context: The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. However, a more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
“A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.”
George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
Why We Must Not Reelect President Bush (2004)
Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)
Context: Intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate, and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.
But freedom of thought is under a triple threat in modern society—from the deliberate opium of mass culture, from cowardly, egotistic, and philistine ideologies, and from the ossified dogmatism of a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship. Therefore, freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people.
“An armed society is a polite society.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author
Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist
[paraphrasing the view of Max Scheler], p. 25.
The Art of Life (2008)
Samuel Alito (1950) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Dissenting, Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S. Ct. 1207, 1229 (2011).
John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Today newspaper, 24 November 1990.
1990s, 1990
