Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
(zh-CN) 我们应当相信群众,我们应当相信党,这是两条根本的原理。如果怀疑这两条原理,那就什么事情也做不成了。
On the Question of Agricultural Co-Operation (July 31, 1955)
1950s
Book III, ch. 10.
Discourses
Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
(zh-CN) 我们应当相信群众,我们应当相信党,这是两条根本的原理。如果怀疑这两条原理,那就什么事情也做不成了。
On the Question of Agricultural Co-Operation (July 31, 1955)
1950s
Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
Source: River out of Eden (1995), pp. 131–132
Context: The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. [... ] In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science
Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 2: The Measure of Time
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957)
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Comment on establishing the University of Virginia, in a letter to Thomas Cooper (7 October 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) edited by Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol VII, p. 200 http://books.google.com/books?id=jrSgJGp-B64C&pg=RA1-PA200&dq=%22A+professorship+of+theology+should+have+no+place+in+our+institution%22&ei=u65FR562EpqCpwLkk9XxBg <br class="br">1810s <br class="br">Context: I agree … that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
“In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.”
Will Durant book The Story of Civilization
Source: The Story of Civilization
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to Benjamin Hawkins (13 August 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 5:390
1780s
“We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear inattainable.”
Proclivis est enim malorum aemulatio, et quorum virtutes assequi nequeas, cito imitaris vitia.
Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church
Leter 107
Letters