“There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own war propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts everything else. Its enemy becomes the embodiment of all evil. Its own side, on the other hand, is the center of all virtue. The contest comes to be viewed as having a final, apocalyptic quality. If we lose, all is lost; life will no longer be worth living; there will be nothing to be salvaged. If we win, then everything will be possible; all our problems will become soluble; the one great source of evil--our enemy--will have been crushed; the forces of good will then sweep forward unimpeded; all worthy aspirations will be satisfied.”

From Russia and the West under Lenin by George Kennan (1960)

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George F. Kennan46

American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and histori… 1904–2005

Howard Raiffa (1924–2016) American academic

Part II, Chapter 5, Settling Out of Court, p. 75.
The Art and Science of Negotiation (1982)

“Its okay to tell a lie but believing in your own lies makes you the first victim, you become your own enemy which limits ability to think progressively towards success in life.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Its okay to tell a lie but believing in your own lies makes you the first victim, you become your own enemy which limits ability to think progressively towards success in life. Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.124 (July 2018)

“In its efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, "Lead me across". But as soon as it is able to say, "All my work is thine," everything remains the same, only it is taken across.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916) Context: This "I" of mine toils hard, day and night, for a home which it knows as its own. Alas, there will be no end of its sufferings so long as it is not able to call this home thine. Till then it will struggle on, and its heart will ever cry, "Ferryman, lead me across." When this home of mine is made thine, that very moment is it taken across, even while its old walls enclose it. This "I" is restless. It is working for a gain which can never be assimilated with its spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, "Lead me across". But as soon as it is able to say, "All my work is thine," everything remains the same, only it is taken across. Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home made thine? Where can I join thee unless in this my work transformed into thy work? If I leave my home I shall not reach thy home; if I cease my work I can never join thee in thy work. For thou dwellest in me and I in thee. Thou without me or I without thee are nothing.

“The new leadership in India is taking shape quietly, without any drum beating through the newspapers. … Various centers, the centers of energy and strength in the life of society are gaining tremendous momentum. May be, the surging new generation of today appears to have lost its bearing, to have lost its soul. But it is absolutely certain that one day it will have its own leader and prophet…. I am absolutely confident that the phoenix of a new leadership is rising from the ashes of all its failure. Soon the world will witness the lightning hidden in its beak and the storm hidden in its wings.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On leadership
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

“A rolling back of the frontiers of State surveillance is necessary. … I have come to the conclusion that this side of MI5 has become more trouble than it is worth. It falls over its own feet too often. It arouses more suspicion and complaint than is justified by the results its achieves. … On grounds of utility I would now close down the political side of its activities.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Letter to The Times (12 March 1985), p. 15
1980s

“Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

No evidence that this phrasing is due to Stalin, and it does not appear in English translations of his philosphical works. Earliest English is found in 1979 in US defense industry, presumably defense consultant Thomas A. Callaghan Jr. The connection of sufficient quantitative change leading to qualitative change is found in Marxist philosophy, by Marx and Engels, drawing from Hegelian philosophy and Ancient Greek philosophy. Marx and Engels are quoted by Stalin, but this formulation appears to be a modern American form; see quantity for details. Stalin may have said that way before World War II, there is evidence in his Russian-language books, for example here http://www.modernlib.ru/books/stalin_iosif_vissarionovich/tom_14/read_16/. Misattributed Variant: Quantity is quality. Source: Re: "Quantity has a quality all its own" source? http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-russia&month=1004&week=a&msg=ljEwsM4dMrpmUGVfI7EGqg, Tim Davenport, h-russia https://networks.h-net.org/h-russia, April 5, 2010

“Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the opposites are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of God is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own emergence”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 60
Context: I have come to understand that the self, my self, is inherently sacred. By virtue of its own improbability, its own miracle, its own emergence … And so I lift up my head, and I bear my own witness, with affection and tenderness and respect. And in so doing, I sanctify myself with my own grace.

“Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 332
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Rationalism in politics, as I have interpreted it, involves an identifiable error, a misconception with regard to the nature of human knowledge, which amounts to a corruption of the mind. And consequently it is without the power to correct its own short-comings; it has no homeopathic quality; you cannot escape its errors by becoming more sincerely or more profoundly rationalistic.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

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