
Stated two months (May 13, 1969) after American bombings in Cambodia began, as quoted by Henry Kissinger (2000), Years of Renewal, page 498.
Source: Middlemarch
Stated two months (May 13, 1969) after American bombings in Cambodia began, as quoted by Henry Kissinger (2000), Years of Renewal, page 498.
Letter to Henry Home (9 February 1848), quoted in J. Y. T. Greig, The Letters of David Hume: Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p. 111
Source: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 397
Context: The system absorbs those who think they can utilize it. Nor can there be any question of finding a modus vivendi or achieving attenuations. It has been demonstrated how the liberals state becomes an authoritarian state. The course is set and no accommodation will be either lasting or sufficient.
In face of this absolute power, only an absolutely negative position is viable. What we have in mind is the attitude that conscientous objectors take on a specific point, and not without good reason. In the present set-up the anarchist attitude of a total refusal of validity or legitimacy to any authority of any kind seems to me to be the only valid and viable one. The point is not to enforce a particular view of society but to establish a counterbalance, a protest, a sign of cleavage. In face of an absolute power only a total confrontation has any meaning.
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”
“Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late.”
Source: Being Peace
“I long ago come to the conclusion that all life is six to five against.”
A Nice Price
Compare with Tom Stoppard in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead: "Life is a gamble, at terrible odds — if it was a bet you wouldn't take it."
On how he used artwork as a form of protest (as quoted in “’What better function for art at this time than as a voice for the voiceless’: The Work of Chicano Artist Malaquías Montoya” https://nacla.org/news/2019/02/17/%E2%80%9Cwhat-better-function-art-time-voice-voiceless%E2%80%9D-work-chicano-artist-malaqu%C3%ADas; 2019 Feb 15)