“Not Nero, but God, rules the world.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis
Lygia to Marcus Vinicius, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)
Source: Civil Government : Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny (1889), p. 73
Context: Human government, the embodied effort of man to rule the world without God, ruled over by "the prince of this world," the devil. Its mission is to execute wrath and vengeance here on earth. Human government bears the same relation to hell as the church bears to heaven.
“Not Nero, but God, rules the world.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis
Lygia to Marcus Vinicius, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)
“The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.”
Michel Houellebecq book Atomised
Source: The Elementary Particles
“One hardly saves a world without ruling it.”
Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia
History and Utopia (1960)
Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter IV, Part I.
Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati
"Greeting to the newly integrated illuminatos dirigentes", in Nachtrag von weitern Originalschriften vol. 2 (1787) p. 45.
R. Scott Bakker book The Darkness That Comes Before
ZARATHINIUS, A DEFENCE OF THE ARCANE ARTS
The Darkness That Comes Before (2004)
“Beautiful military equipment don't rule the world, People rule the world. People.”
Mohammad Javad Zarif (1960) Iranian politician
Interview to CNN, January 7, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyH6QmFmeZE <br class="br">Interview to CNN
“It would be another day ruled by this world’s new gods: gold and power.”
Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer
Source: The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011), Ch. 1
Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner
Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)
Context: I myself have two specimens of Ikkyu's calligraphy. One of them is a single line: "It is easy to enter the world of the Buddha, it is hard to enter the world of the devil." Much drawn to these words, I frequently make use of them when asked for a specimen of my own calligraphy. They can be read in any number of ways, as difficult as one chooses, but in that world of the devil added to the world of the Buddha, Ikkyu of Zen comes home to me with great immediacy. The fact that for an artist, seeking truth, good, and beauty, the fear and petition even as a prayer in those words about the world of the devil — the fact that it should be there apparent on the surface, hidden behind, perhaps speaks with the inevitability of fate. There can be no world of the Buddha without the world of the devil. And the world of the devil is the world difficult of entry. It is not for the weak of heart.
James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher
186; as cited in: Thomas Diefenbach (2009) Management and the Dominance of Managers. p. 128
The Managerial Revolution, 1941