Quotes about fellow
page 12

Ralph Vaughan Williams photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Ian Fleming photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo

“Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary character.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

Harrison v. Carter (1876), L. R. 2 Com. PI. D. 36.

Fred Hoyle photo
Mona Charen photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Johnson: What do you think about this Vietnam thing? I’d like to hear you talk a little bit.
Russell: Well, frankly, Mr. President, it’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were going to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it. I just don’t know what to do.
Johnson: Well, that’s the way I have been feeling for six months.
Russell: Our position is deteriorating and it looks like the more we try to do for them, the less they are willing to do for themselves. It is a mess and it’s going to get worse, and I don’t know how or what to do. I don’t think the American people are quite ready for us to send our troops in there to do the fighting. If I was going to get out, I’d get the same crowd that got rid of old Diem [the Vietnamese prime minister who was overthrown and assassinated in 1963] to get rid of these people and to get some fellow in there that said we wish to hell we would get out. That would give us a good excuse for getting out.
Johnson: How important is it to us?
Russell: It isn’t important a damn bit for all this new missile stuff.
Johnson: I guess it is important.
Russell: From a psychological standpoint. Other than the question of our word and saving face, that’s the reason that I said that I don’t think that anybody would expect us to stay in there. It’s going to be a headache to anybody that tries to fool with it. You’ve got all the brains in the country, Mr. President—you better get ahold of them. I don’t know what to do about this. I saw it all coming on, but that don’t do any good now, that’s water over the dam and under the bridge. And we are there.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Telephone call with Senator Richard Russell (May 27, 1964)

Halldór Laxness photo
Ravachol photo

“If I chose to speak, it is not to defend myself of the acts of which I'm accused, as only society, which by its organisation puts men into continual struggle each against the other, is responsible. Indeed, today do we not see in all classes and walks of life, people who desire, I will not say death as this sounds bad to the ear, but misfortune for their fellows if that can bring them advantages.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Si je prends la parole, ce n'est pas pour me défendre des actes dont on m'accuse, car seule la société, qui, par son organisation, met les hommes en lutte continuelle les uns contre les autres, est responsable. En effet, ne voit-on pas aujourd'hui dans toutes les classes et dans toutes les fonctions des personnes qui désirent, je ne dirai pas la mort, parce que cela sonne mal à l'oreille, mais le malheur de leurs semblables, si cela peut leur procurer des avantages.
Trial statement

Ed Bradley photo

“For nearly forty years, Ed Bradley dedicated his life to journalism and uncovered some of history's greatest stories. His legacy, his life's work, is a story for all of us to admire. Ed was a man of journalistic integrity, he not only set a high standard for his fellow journalists; he also helped to break down barriers in a field that traditionally has not reflected the true diversity of our Nation.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Christopher Moore photo
Ross Perot photo
Albert Einstein photo
John Townsend Trowbridge photo

“The ideologies of the super-tribes exercised absolute power over all individual minds under their sway.
In civilized regions the super-tribes and the overgrown natural tribes created an astounding mental tyranny. In relation to his natural tribe, at least if it was small and genuinely civilized, the individual might still behave with intelligence and imagination. Along with his actual tribal kinsmen he might support a degree of true community unknown on Earth. He might in fact be a critical, self-respecting and other-respecting person. But in all matters connected with the super-tribes, whether national or economic, he behaved in a very different manner. All ideas coming to him with the sanction of nation or class would be accepted uncritically and with fervor by himself and all his fellows. As soon as he encountered one of the symbols or slogans of his super-tribe he ceased to be a human personality and became a sort of de-cerebrate animal, capable only of stereotyped reactions. In extreme cases his mind was absolutely closed to influences opposed to the suggestion of the super-tribe. Criticism was either met with blind rage or actually not heard at all. Persons who in the intimate community of their small native tribe were capable of great mutual insight and sympathy might suddenly, in response to tribal symbols, be transformed into vessels of crazy intolerance and hate directed against national or class enemies. In this mood they would go to any extreme of self-sacrifice for the supposed glory of the super-tribe. Also they would show great ingenuity in contriving means to exercise their lustful vindictiveness upon enemies who in favorable circumstances could be quite as kindly and intelligent as themselves.”

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter V: Worlds Innumerable; 2. Strange Mankinds (p. 62)

Steve Sailer photo

“As the empirical case for mass immigration has become less plausible, its advocates have increasingly switched to emphasizing their moral superiority: they don`t look out for the general welfare of their fellow citizens, so that makes them better than their fellow citizens.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Byron Roth`s The Perils Of Diversity: Apologies To The Grandchildren http://www.vdare.com/articles/byron-roths-the-perils-of-diversity-apologies-to-the-grandchildren, VDARE, February 13, 2011

Jadunath Sarkar photo
Matthijs Maris photo
Lyndon LaRouche photo

“[The Leesburg Garden Club is a] nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making nuisances of themselves.”

Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) American political activist and founder of the LaRouche movement

Quoted in Chicago Tribune (2 December 1988) "Ex-Aide: LaRouche Extravagant" p. 13.
Attributed

Tom Robbins photo
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
John Greenleaf Whittier photo
Learned Hand photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law last year. I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty. I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to help those nations that are trying to control population growth. I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America. I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire large river basins. I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire federal system from prevention to probation. I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in federal and state jury selection, by making it a serious federal crime to obstruct public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the federal government by creating a new Cabinet-level Department of Transportation and reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both required as well as rewarded. I will ask you to make it possible for members of the House of Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the nation through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to four years, concurrent with that of the President. Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it. We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop the Great Society. Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion. Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year. Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion. Revenues next year will be $111 billion. On a cash basis—which is the way that you and I keep our family budget—the federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is to say, if we include all the money that your government will take in and all the money that your government will spend, your government next year will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year 1967. I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of the richest nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Peter L. Berger photo
Oliver Cowdery photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, making sure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N'Roses, my favorite heavy metal [sic] band!"I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory was. Would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unlike "Silent Night") has one canonical version, so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patient's humming with the standard record and compare the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, the surgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. "Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!"Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do that," replied the neurosurgeon, "since I cut out that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?"”

I asked, and he replied, "No, I already told you — I hate rock music."</p>
Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 58-59

James A. Garfield photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Sinclair Lewis photo

“The doctor asserted, 'Sure religion is a fine influence—got to have it to keep the lower classes in order—fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O. K.; lot of wise old coots figured it out, and they knew more about it than we do.' He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it; he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked. Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic. When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children to think about; when she experimented with the Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to store-keeping elders giving unvarying weekly testimony in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and 'a vengeful God…' then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as Zoroastrianism—without the splendor. But when she went to church suppers a felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call, 'My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come into abiding grace,' then Carol found the humanness behind the sanguinary and alien theology.”

Main Street (1920)

Samuel Johnson photo

“I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1769
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Eugene V. Debs photo

“For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Negro and His Nemesis (1904)

Habib Bourguiba photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Tadamichi Kuribayashi photo
Thomas Guthrie photo
Nadine Gordimer photo
Martin Van Buren photo

“There is a power in public opinion in this country- and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers- which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.”

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)

As quoted by William A. DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1984) p. 133

Frances Kellor photo

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

David Cameron photo

“What we are fighting, in Islamist extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm. And it often backs violence to achieve this aim – mostly violence against fellow Muslims – who don’t subscribe to its sick worldview. But you don’t have to support violence to subscribe to certain intolerant ideas which create a climate in which extremists can flourish. Ideas which are hostile to basic liberal values such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality. Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation. Ideas – like those of the despicable far right – which privilege one identity to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of others. And ideas also based on conspiracy: that Jews exercise malevolent power; or that Western powers, in concert with Israel, are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam. In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached – that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to provoke the invasion of Afghanistan; that British security services knew about 7/7, but didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash. And like so many ideologies that have existed before – whether fascist or communist – many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it. We need to understand why it is proving so attractive.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Babe Ruth photo
Rashi photo

“" With your own blemish do not taunt your fellow." Deuteronomy 10,19”

Rashi (1040–1105) French rabbi and commentator

Ethics

“One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.”

Jeff Cooper (1920–2006) American journalist

Cooper vs. Terrorism https://www.sightm1911.com/lib/ccw/Cooper_vs_Terrorism.htm
Variant: One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure — and in some cases I have — that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

Franz Kafka photo
Milton Friedman photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Acting is not a profession of competing with other actors, but rather a vocation of sharing with fellow human beings.”

Marjo-Riikka Makela (1977) Finnish actress

2009 speech at the opening ceremony for Chekhov Studio International Los Angeles ( online http://chekhovstudio.com/2013/07/inspiring-quotes/ and books.google.com http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Spirit_of_Creation_Discipline_and_At.html?id=jqMInoDQoxMC)

Boris Johnson photo

“There was a young fellow from Ankara
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Boris Johnson wins The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition, 18 May 2016. http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/boris-johnson-wins-the-spectators-president-erdogan-offensive-poetry-competition/
2010s, 2016

Fred Astaire photo

“He is a truly complex fellow, not unlike the Michelangelos and da Vincis of the Renaissance period. He's a supreme artist but he is constantly filled with doubts and self-anger about his work--and that is what makes him so good. He is a perfectionist who is never sure he is attaining perfection.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Rouben Mamoulian, quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0091737362. p. 200.

Anu Garg photo

“Do the best job I can, not hurt our fellow beings on this planet, that's my religion.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

A.Word.A.Day (Jan 17, 2011) http://wordsmith.org/words/intromit.html

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Fritjof Capra photo
Theodor Herzl photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
George Washington Carver photo

“My attitude toward life was also my attitude toward science. Jesus said one must be born again, must become as a little child. He must let no laziness, no fear, no stubbornness keep him from his duty. If he were born again he would see life from such a plane he would have the energy not to be impeded in his duty by these various sidetrackers and inhibitions. My work, my life, must be in the spirit of a little child seeking only to know the truth and follow it. My purpose alone must be God's purpose - to increase the welfare and happiness of His people. Nature will not permit a vacuum. It will be filled with something. Human need is really a great spiritual vacuum which God seeks to fill… With one hand in the hand of a fellow man in need and the other in the hand of Christ, He could get across the vacuum and I became an agent. Then the passage, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," came to have real meaning. As I worked on projects which fulfilled a real human need forces were working through me which amazed me. I would often go to sleep with an apparently insoluble problem. When I woke the answer was there. Why, then, should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with a willing man in a laboratory? Some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

William J. Federer (2003), George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith in His Own Words http://books.google.es/books?id=Uyktcxy4MHkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 68.

Luise Rainer photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo

“.. as I met with Mr. (Dunning there. There is something exclusive of the clear and deep understanding of that gentleman most exceedingly pleasing to me. He seems the only man who talks as Giardini plays, if you know what I mean; he puts no more motion than what goes to the real performance, which constitutes that ease and gentility peculiar to damned clever fellows... He is an amazing compact man in every respect.... and besides this neatness in outward appearance, his storeroom seems cleared of all French ornaments and gingerbread work, everything is simplicity and elegance and in its proper place, no disorder or confusion in the furniture.... Sober sense and great acuteness are marked very strong in his face.... but there is genius (in our sense of the word). (It) shines in all he says. In short, Mr. Jackson of Exeter [his friend], I begin to think there is something in the air of Devonshire that grows clever fellows. I could name four or five of you, superior to the product of any other county in England.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 2 Sept. 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 384 (Appendix A - Letter VII)
1755 - 1769

George Marshall photo

“I don't want you fellows sitting around asking me what to do. I want you to tell me what to do.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

To his staffers, as quoted in General of the Army : George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman (1991) by Ed Cray, p. 591

Giovanni della Casa photo
Voltairine de Cleyre photo
George Cheyne (physician) photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Michael Moore photo
Lysander Spooner photo

“The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: “To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.””

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section I, p. 6
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

David Lloyd George photo

“The Budget…is introduced not merely for the purpose of raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile, taxes that will bring forth fruit—the security of the country which is paramount in the minds of all. The provision for the aged and deserving poor—was it not time something was done? It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours—probably the richest in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen—should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him—an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising money to pay for the new road—aye, and to widen it, so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join in the march. There are so many in the country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen they are very shabby rich men.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 145.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Jimmy Stewart photo

“Hollywood dishes out too much praise for small things I won't let it get me, but too much praise can turn a fellow's head if he doesn't watch his step.”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

As quoted in "Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart dead at 89" at CNN (2 July 1997)

H.L. Mencken photo
George W. Bush photo
Jeremy Rifkin photo
Enoch Powell photo
Friedrich Engels photo

“Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Anti-Dühring http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm (1878)

George Bernard Shaw photo
John Maynard Keynes photo
Maimónides photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Jonathan Swift photo

“Hail fellow, well met.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

My Lady's Lamentation, The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. II, edited by William Ernst Browning (1910); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Tom Lehrer photo

“I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "National Brotherhood Week"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Menno Simons photo
Charles Stross photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Everything in our modern substitutes for religion—whether Baconian or Rousseauistic—will be found to converge upon the idea of service. The crucial question is whether one is safe in assuming that the immense machinery of power that has resulted from activity of the utilitarian type can be made, on anything like present lines, to serve disinterested ends; whether it will not rather minister to the egoistic aims either of national groups or of individuals.
One's answer to this question will depend on one's view of the Rousseauistic theory of brotherhood. … To assert that man in a state of nature, or some similar state thus projected, is good, is to discredit the traditional controls in the actual world. Humility, conversion, decorum—all go by the board in favor of free temperamental overflow. Does man thus emancipated exude spontaneously an affection for his fellows that will be an effective counterpoise to the sheer expansion of his egoistic impulses? …
Unfortunately, the facts have persistently refused to conform to humanitarian theory. There has been an ever-growing body of evidence from the eighteenth century to the Great War that in the natural man, as he exists in the real world and not in some romantic dreamland, the will to power is, on the whole, more than a match for the will to service. To be sure, many remain unconvinced by this evidence. Stubborn facts, it has been rightly remarked, are as nothing compared with a stubborn theory. Altruistic theory is likely to prove peculiarly stubborn, because, probably more than any other theory ever conceived, it is flattering: it holds out the hope of the highest spiritual benefits—for example, peace and fraternal union—without any corresponding spiritual effort.”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 7-8

David Cameron photo
Yasunari Kawabata photo

“"Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" With me was the knowledge that that fellow Ikkyu twice contemplated suicide. I have "that fellow", because the priest Ikkyu is known even to children as a most amusing person, and because anecdotes about his limitlessly eccentric behavior have come down to us in ample numbers. It is said of him that children climbed his knee to stroke his beard, that wild birds took feed from his hand. It would seem from all this that he was the ultimate in mindlessness, that he was an approachable and gentle sort of priest. As a matter of fact he was the most severe and profound of Zen priests. Said to have been the son of an emperor, he entered a temple at the age of six, and early showed his genius as a poetic prodigy. At the same time he was troubled with the deepest of doubts about religion and life. "If there is a god, let him help me. If there is none, let me throw myself to the bottom of the lake and become food for fishes." Leaving behind these words he sought to throw himself into a lake, but was held back. … He gave his collected poetry the title "Collection of the Roiling Clouds", and himself used the expression "Roiling Clouds" as a pen name. In his collection and its successor are poems quite without parallel in the Chinese and especially the Zen poetry of the Japanese middle ages, erotic poems and poems about the secrets of the bedchamber that leave one in utter astonishment. He sought, by eating fish and drinking spirits and having commerce with women, to go beyond the rules and proscriptions of the Zen of his day, and to seek liberation from them, and thus, turning against established religious forms, he sought in the pursuit of Zen the revival and affirmation of the essence of life, of human existence, in a day civil war and moral collapse.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

André Maurois photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Edward Everett photo
Roger Scruton photo
Aron Ra photo
Edwin Meese III photo