“His parents had abdicated responsibility to an illusion.”
Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 6 (p. 83).
“Fascism is a complete abdication of personal responsibility.”
Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Context: Fascism is a complete abdication of personal responsibility. You are surrendering all responsibility for your own actions to the state on the belief that in unity there is strength, which was the definition of fascism represented by the original roman symbol of the bundle of bound twigs. Yes, it is a very persuasive argument: “In unity there is strength.” But inevitably people tend to come to a conclusion that the bundle of bound twigs will be much stronger if all the twigs are of a uniform size and shape, that there aren’t any oddly shaped or bent twigs that are disturbing the bundle. So it goes from “in unity there is strength” to “in uniformity there is strength” and from there it proceeds to the excesses of fascism as we’ve seen them exercised throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.
Now anarchy, on the other hand, is almost starting from the principle that “in diversity, there is strength,” which makes much more sense from the point of view of looking at the natural world. Nature, and the forces of evolution — if you happen to be living in a country where they still believe in the forces of evolution, of course — did not really see fit to follow that “in unity and in uniformity there is strength” idea. If you want to talk about successful species, then you’re talking about bats and beetles; there are thousands of different varieties of different bat and beetle.
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Alan Moore 274
English writer primarily known for his work in comic books 1953Related quotes
“There is no difference between machine autonomy and the abdication of human responsibility.”
Jaron Lanier
(1960) American computer scientist, musician, and author
"One Half of a Manifesto," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
Margrethe II of Denmark
(1940) Queen of Denmark
Quoted in Bistrup, Anne, 'Margrethe', JP/Politikens Forlaghus (2005).
Possiblity of Abdication
Edward R. Murrow
(1908–1965) Television journalist
The reference to Cassius is that of the character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Listen to an mp3 sound file http://www.otr.com/murrow_mccarthy.shtml of parts of this statement.
See It Now (1954)
Context: No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck.
Adolf Eichmann
(1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer
Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny, as quoted by Alan Rosenthal, "Eichmann, Revisited" in The Jerusalem Post (20 April 2011) http://m.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Jewish-World/Eichmann-Revisited.
Julie Burchill
(1959) British writer
Attributed to Burchill in: Mark Water (2000) The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations. p. 111
Zeev Sternhell
(1935) Israeli historian
Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p.7
Thomas Mann
(1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Essays, ed. by H.Kurzke, Frankfurt 1986, vol. 2, p. 311
Carl Bernstein
(1944) American journalist
The best obtainable version of the truth http://www.riasberlin.de/rcom-pubs/rcus-pubs-news4-98.html, Carl Bernstein's talk at the annual convention of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, 1998-09-26.