Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 16
2000s, 2005, Address to the Nation on Iraqi Elections (December 2005)
“It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse.”
Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack.
“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.”
Speech, "The War and the Future" (1940); published in Order of the Day (1942)
Context: It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
“Like slavery and piracy, terrorism has no place in the modern world.”
2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)
Context: Other multilateral organizations have spoken clearly as well. The G-8 has declared that all terrorist acts are criminal and must be universally condemned. And the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference recently spoke out against a suicide bombing, which he said runs counter to the teachings of Islam. The message behind these statements is resolutely clear. Like slavery and piracy, terrorism has no place in the modern world.
As quoted in What Great Men Think of Religion (1972 [1945]) by Ira D. Cardiff, p. 245. Actually said by Edward Gibbonː "The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776, Vol. I, Ch. II).
Misattributed
