Quotes about principal
page 2

“The whole financial basis of insurance would be questionable if it were possible to change the relative frequency of the occurrence of the insurance cases (deaths, etc.) by excluding, for example, every tenth one of the insured persons, or by some selection principal.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

First Lecture, The Definition of Probability, p. 26
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

Death, Question, Change, Personality

“We're all a bunch of badminton birdies who just got batted from the Republican side of the court to the Democrat side. We'll eventually get batted back again, of course, unless libertarians can manage to do something about it. If your principal concern, like mine, is freedom, there's absolutely no discernable difference between the two 'majors,' and for all practical purposes, they're one big party — the Boot On Your Neck party — pretending to be two.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

Interview, Ari Armstrong, "Catching Up with L. Neil Smith".

Freedom

“Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Needs of the Soul (1949), p. 97

Men, Food, Hope, Exercises

“The South Indian Missionary Conference held in 1858 had left nobody in doubt as to what the missionary schools and colleges were trying to achieve. “The object of all missionary labour,” proclaimed the Conference report, “is, or should be not primarily the civilization but the evangelisation of the heathen. Schools may be regarded as converting agencies, and their value estimated by the number who are led by the instruction they receive to renounce idolatry and make an open profession of Christianity; or the principal object aimed at may be the raising up of Native helpers in the Missionary work. Each of these is a legitimate object of Missionary labour and the value of any system of education as a Missionary Agency, must be tested by its adaptedness to accomplish one or more of these objects.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Education, School

“For me, the historian's principal task should be to raise the dead to life.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Introduction
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003)

Life, Dead

“I have certainly never contended that generally authoritarian governments are more likely to secure individual liberty than democratic ones, but rather the contrary. This does not mean, however, that in some historical circumstances personal liberty may not have been better protected under an authoritarian than democratic government. (…) More recently I have not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende. Nor have I heard any sensible person claim that in the principalities of Monaco or Lichtenstein, which I am told are not precisely democratic, personal liberty is smaller than anywhere else!”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times (3 August 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

Freedom, Personality

“Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just.
(b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.)
(c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine.
(d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

Love, People, Family, Food

“The function of logical analysis is to analyse all knowledge, all assertions of science and of everyday life, in order to make clear the sense of each such assertion and the connections between them. One of the principal tasks of the logical analysis of a given proposition is to find out the method of verification for that proposition.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Rudolf Carnap (1935) Philosophy and Logical Syntax. p. 9-10

Life, Knowledge, Sense, Science

“Jocelyne clicked her barbell on her teeth. I was watching her closely for signs of collapsing romance. Her tongue was pierced, (a process, she had elaborated, that had taken two weeks of painful healing) and it put me in mind of the tongue-piercing ceremony endured on October 28, 709 AD by the principal wife of Shield Jaguar, Blood Lord of Yaxchilan (Lintel 24); i. e. to my eye, pointless, but if it's good enough for the Mayans …
"Why did you do it?"
"To punish my tongue, for saying things it shouldn't have." Click.
"But surely it was only obeying orders?"
"It has to learn to be warier of its mistress. And it's also a symbol." Click.
"What of?"”

Tibor Fischer book The Thought Gang

"That changes from day to day. It's a multi-purpose symbol."
See wikipedia on Yaxchilan.
The Thought Gang (1994)

Pain, Learning, Change

“Some months ago I took the liberty of troubling you for a reference to Laplace. In your reply for which it still remains to me to thank you, you were pleased to express an interest in the subject of investigation alluded to in my letter. I have now drawn up a paper embodying the principal results of the inquiry which I have had some thoughts of laying before the Royal Society. Before taking a step of this nature I am however anxious to have the opinion of a more competent judge as to its propriety. Knowing that you have written much on kindred subjects, shall I presume too far on your courtesy in applying to you a second time?”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Boole to De Morgan, 19 June 1843; in: G.C. Smith. The Boole-DeMorgan Correspondence 1842-1864 https://archive.org/stream/TheBoole-demorganCorrespondence1842-1864/Smith-TheBoole-demorganCorrespondence1842-1864#page/n17/mode/2u, Oxford University Press 1982. p. 10 1840s

Nature, Time

“My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter III, Theory of Utility, p. 65.

Nature, Problem

“I answer that, It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in other works, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation. This can be made clear if we observe the mode of generation carried out in various living things. Some living things do not possess in themselves the power of generation, but are generated by some other specific agent, such as some plants and animals by the influence of the heavenly bodies, from some fitting matter and not from seed: others possess the active and passive generative power together; as we see in plants which are generated from seed; for the noblest vital function in plants is generation. Wherefore we observe that in these the active power of generation invariably accompanies the passive power. Among perfect animals the active power of generation belongs to the male sex, and the passive power to the female. And as among animals there is a vital operation nobler than generation, to which their life is principally directed; therefore the male sex is not found in continual union with the female in perfect animals, but only at the time of coition; so that we may consider that by this means the male and female are one, as in plants they are always united; although in some cases one of them preponderates, and in some the other. But man is yet further ordered to a still nobler vital action, and that is intellectual operation. Therefore there was greater reason for the distinction of these two forces in man; so that the female should be produced separately from the male; although they are carnally united for generation. Therefore directly after the formation of woman, it was said: "And they shall be two in one flesh"”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Gn. 2:24
I, q. 92, art. 1 (Whether the Woman should have been made in the first production of things?)
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Life, Sex, Time, Help

“A former high school principal accused of being impolite to a mixed-race girl was hired for an administrative job by the school district, over the objections of outsiders demanding ever more minority “rights.””

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Letter From Alabama" by Jeffrey Tucker, Chronicles, May 1996, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 https://www.unz.org/Pub/Chronicles-1996may-00036,

School, Girl

“Myspace is a great way to keep in touch with friends whom you don't care enough about to actually have a conversation with. Why bother calling to say 'How are you?' when you can just surf their page and post an mpeg of a guy farting on his cat?
[Myspace is] this website where young people can post pictures and info about themselves for anyone to see. When I first heard about it, I thought to myself, 'Finally a Yellow Pages for sex offenders. Why didn't I think of that?'
The most popular (American Idol) contestants have been: white people that sound black, young people that sound old, and straight guys that sound gay.
The final five are exactly like The Breakfast Club: There's the rebel(Chris Daughtry), the princess (Katharine McPhee), the nerd (Elliot Yamin), the weirdo (Paris Bennett)… and of course, the principal (Taylor Hicks). What? He's old!
(Ryan Phillippe & Reese Witherspoon) Broke up, (Kid Rock & Pamela Anderson) broke up, (Vince Vaughn & Jennifer Aniston) broke up, (Kate Moss & Pete Doherty) coked up. They said it wouldn't last; not the marriage, the stash. 007,.08, 1.2, 215. Came out, came out, (Tom Brady and Bridget Moynihan) came in, (Brady and Gisele Bündchen) came in. Hates Jews, went to rehab, loves Jews; hates gays, went to rehab, now loves gays; hates blacks, didn't go to rehab, still hates blacks. 'Father Knows Best', (with Britney Spears) 'Mad About You,' (Spears without panties) 'Leave It to Beaver.' New father, new father, new father? R. I. P., D. U. I., P. O. W. 'You're a hypocrite,' 'you're fat,' 'you're rude,' 'you're ugly,' whoa, whoa, whoa, guys. Stop fighting, you're both right. Booze, pot, Vicodin, crack, booze, pot, Vicodin, and crack.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

The Showbiz Show with David Spade

Love, Hate, Marriage, People

“The next monument visited was the great Jain temple built only a few years before by Shantidas Jhaveri, one of the wealthiest men of Gujarat in his day and high in favour both with Shah Jahan and after him with Aurangzeb. …In 1638, however, when Mandelslo visited the place, this temple which he calls ‘ the principal mosque of the Banyas ’ was in all its pristine splendour and ‘ without dispute one of the noblest structures that could be seen’. ‘It was then new,’ he adds, ‘ for the Founder, who was a rich Banya merchant, named Shantidas, was living in my time.
As Mandelslo’s description is the earliest account we have of this famous monument, which was desecrated only seven years after visit by the Orders of Aurangzeb, then viceroy of Gujarat (1645), we shall reproduce it at some length. It stood in the middle of a great court which was enclosed by a high wall of freestone. All about this wall on the inner side was a gallery, similar to the cloisters of the monasteries in Europe, with a large number of cells, in each of which was placed a statue in white or black marble. These figures no doubt represented the Jain Tirthankars, but Mandelslo may be forgiven when he speaks of each of them as ‘ representing a woman naked, sitting, and having her legs lying cross under her, according to the mode of the country. Some of the cells had three statues in them, namely, a large one between two smaller ones.’ At the entrance to the temple stood two elephants of black marble in life- size and on one of them was seated an effigy of the builder. The walls of the temple were adorned with figures of men and animals. At the further end of the building were the shrines consisting of three chapels divided from each other by wooden rails. In these were placed marble statues of the Tirthankars with a lighted lamp before that which stood in the central shrine. One of the priests attending the temple was busy receiving from the votaries flowers which were placed round the images, as also oil for the lamps that hung before the rails, and wheat and salt as a sacrifice. The priest had covered his mouth and nose with a piece of linen cloth so that the impurity of his breath should not profane the images.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Mandelslo’s Travels In Western India (a.d.1638-9) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531053 p. 23-25

Life, Men, Flowers, Lying

“On the campus of Outlaw College, professors of essential insanities would characterize the conflicting attitudes of Nina Jablonski and Leigh-Cheri as indicative of a general conflict between social idealism and romanticism. As any of the learned professors would explain, plied with sufficient tequila, no matter how fervently a romantic might support a movement, he or she eventually must withdraw from active participation in that movement because the group ethic — the supremacy of the organization over the individual — is an affront to intimacy. Intimacy is the principal source of the sugars with which this life is sweetened. It is absolutely vital to the essential insanities.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Life, Support, Learning

“All this will have left you disposed to understand one of our principal Futurist efforts, which consists of abolishing in literature the apparently indissoluble fusion of the two concepts of Woman and Beauty. This ideological a fusion has reduced all romance to a sort of heroic assault that a bellicose and lyrical male launches against a tower that bristles with enemies, a story which ends when the hero, now beneath starlight, carries the divine Beauty-Woman away to new heights. Novels such as Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo or Salammbô by Flaubert can clarify my point. It is a matter of a dominant leitmotif, already worn out, c of which we would like to disencumber literature and art in general.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine' 1911
Source: Poggi, Christine, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. Yale University Press, 2009. p. 89

Beauty, Art, Literature, Understanding

“The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 479.

“In plausible reasoning the principal thing is to distinguish… a more reasonable guess from a less reasonable guess.”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Induction and Analogy in Mathematics (1954)

“In taking leave of this subject for the present I wish to renew the expression of my conviction that the existence of African slavery in Cuba is a principal cause of the lamentable condition of the island. I do not doubt that Congress shares with me the hope that it will soon be made to disappear, and that peace and prosperity may follow its abolition.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Fifth State of the Union Address (1873)

Peace, Hope

“All the pictures [in the exhibition, 1910] include a plus-factor, which robs the public [in Munich] of her pleasure but which is in every case the principal merit of the work; the completely spiritualized, de-materialized awardness of perception, which our fathers, the artists of the nineteenth century, never even tried to achieve in their 'pictures'. This bold undertaking, to take the 'matiere', which Impressionism sank its teeth into, and spiritualize it, is a necessary reaction, which began with Gauguin in Pont-Aven, and has already fostered innumerable experiments… The way the Munich public condemns the exhibition is almost amusing.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Franz Marc's note on the reception of the second exhibition of the 'Neue KünstlerVereinigung' in Munich, September 1910; as cited by , in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 125
1905 - 1910

Pleasure, Way

“Among the sources of those innumerable calamities which from age to age have overwhelmed mankind, may be reckoned as one of the principal the abuse of words.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Olla Podrida, No. 7 http://books.google.com/books?id=JSkTAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA133, Saturday, August 18. 1787 Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, 1880

Age

“Cynics and physics students put it like this:
:1. You can't win.
:2. You can't break even.
:3. You can't get out of the game.
:* Presenting a standard humorous summary of the three principal laws of thermodynamics in Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos : The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe (1991), p. 106”

Dennis Overbye (1944) American writer

Secret, Law, Game, Universe

“The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the title idolater to Roman Catholics; Trinitarians deny the name Christian to Unitarians, while the latter retort by stigmatising the worshippers of the son of man as Pagans who adore a created and dependent being.”

Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) Indian religious, social, and educational reformer, and humanitarian

His reply after being called a heathen by John Marshman. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354

Dependency

“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, World, Faith

“The principal function of anti-Americanism has always been, and still is, to discredit liberalism by discrediting its supreme incarnation. To travesty the United States as a repressive, unjust, racist—almost fascist—society was a way of proclaiming: look what happens when liberalism is implemented!”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

"Introduction" http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/anam/anam_intro.html 2000s, Anti-Americanism (2003)

Way

“I do not say the story is true, for I did not witness the happenings which it portrays, but the fact that in the telling of it to you I have taken fictitious names for the principal characters quite sufficiently evidences the sincerity of my own belief that it may be true.
The yellow, mildewed pages of the diary of a man long dead, and the records of the Colonial Office dovetail perfectly with the narrative of my convivial host, and so I give you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these several various agencies.
If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable, and interesting.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 1 : Out to Sea

Sincerity, Dead

“And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, —Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay?</b”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Sesame and Lilies, lecture II: Lilies http://www.fullbooks.com/Sesame-and-Lilies3.html

Question, Problem

“Love your fellow as yourself'- Rabbi Akiva says: This is the great principal of the Torah”

Akiba ben Joseph (50–136) Tanna

Jerusalem Talmud Nedarim 30b

Love

“Nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book Between Two Ages

Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era, 1971.

Life

“Of greater importance than this regulation of African clientship were the political consequences of the Jugurthine war or rather of the Jugurthine insurrection, although these have been frequently estimated too highly. Certainly all the evils of the government were therein brought to light in all their nakedness; it was now not merely notorious but, so to speak, judicially established, that among the governing lords of Rome everything was treated as venal--the treaty of peace and the right of intercession, the rampart of the camp and the life of the soldier; the African had said no more than the simple truth, when on his departure from Rome he declared that, if he had only gold enough, he would undertake to buy the city itself. But the whole external and internal government of this period bore the same stamp of miserable baseness. In our case the accidental fact, that the war in Africa is brought nearer to us by means of better accounts than the other contemporary military and political events, shifts the true perspective; contemporaries learned by these revelations nothing but what everybody knew long before and every intrepid patriot had long been in a position to support by facts. The circumstance, however, that they were now furnished with some fresh, still stronger and still more irrefutable, proofs of the baseness of the restored senatorial government--a baseness only surpassed by its incapacity--might have been of importance, had there been an opposition and a public opinion with which the government would have found it necessary to come to terms. But this war had in fact exposed the corruption of the government no less than it had revealed the utter nullity of the opposition. It was not possible to govern worse than the restoration governed in the years 637-645; it was not possible to stand forth more defenceless and forlorn than was the Roman senate in 645: had there been in Rome a real opposition, that is to say, a party which wished and urged a fundamental alteration of the constitution, it must necessarily have now made at least an attempt to overturn the restored senate. No such attempt took place; the political question was converted into a personal one, the generals were changed, and one or two useless and unimportant people were banished. It was thus settled, that the so-called popular party as such neither could nor would govern; that only two forms of government were at all possible in Rome, a -tyrannis- or an oligarchy; that, so long as there happened to be nobody sufficiently well known, if not sufficiently important, to usurp the regency of the state, the worst mismanagement endangered at the most individual oligarchs, but never the oligarchy; that on the other hand, so soon as such a pretender appeared, nothing was easier than to shake the rotten curule chairs. In this respect the coming forward of Marius was significant, just because it was in itself so utterly unwarranted. If the burgesses had stormed the senate-house after the defeat of Albinus, it would have been a natural, not to say a proper course; but after the turn which Metellus had given to the Numidian war, nothing more could be said of mismanagement, and still less of danger to the commonwealth, at least in this respect; and yet the first ambitious officer who turned up succeeded in doing that with which the older Africanus had once threatened the government,(16) and procured for himself one of the principal military commands against the distinctly- expressed will of the governing body. Public opinion, unavailing in the hands of the so-called popular party, became an irresistible weapon in the hands of the future king of Rome. We do not mean to say”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 3, pg 163, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 3

Life, War, People, Truth

“It is frequently expressed in all parts of Scripture, that the worship of the stars would be followed by absence of rain, devastation of the land, bad times, diseases, and shortness of life. But abandonment of that worship, and the return to the service of God, would be the cause of the presence of rain, fertility of the ground, good times, health and length of life. Thus Scripture teaches, in order that man should abandon idolatry, the reverse of that which idolatrous priests preached to the people, for, as has been shown by us, the principal object of the Law is to remove this doctrine, and to destroy its traces.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.30

Life, God, People, Health

“A century after the death of Patrick… there were few Romans left in western Europe. [By the mid sixth century] the whole subtle substructure of Roman political organization and Roman communication has vanished. In its place have grown the sturdy little principalities of the Middle Ages, Gothic illiterates ruling over Gothic illiterates, pagan or occasionally Arian—that is, following a debased, simpleminded form of Christianity in which Jesus was given a status similar to that of Mohammed in Islam.”

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

Death, Age, Communication

“The forts of Siwistan and Sisam have been already taken. The nephew of Dahir, his warriors, and principal officers have been despatched, and the infidels converted to Islam or destroyed. Instead of idol temples, mosques and other places of worship have been built, pulpits have been erected, the Khutba is read, the call to prayers is raised, so that devotions are performed at the stated hours. The takbir and praise to the Almighty Allah are offered every morning and evening.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Muhammad bin Qasim, letter to Hajjaj, his uncle and governor of Iraq. Siwistan and Sisam (Sindh). Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 164. (The Chach Nama). Also quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Reading

“It is true that M. Fourier had the opinion that the principal end of mathematics was the public utility and the explanation of natural phenomena; but such a philosopher as he is should have known that the unique end of science is the honor of the human mind, and that from this point of view a question of number is as important as a question of the system of the world.”

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician

Letter to Legendre (July 2, 1830) in response to Fourier's report to the Paris Academy Science that mathematics should be applied to the natural sciences, as quoted in Science (March 10, 1911) Vol. 33 https://books.google.com/books?id=4LU7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA359, p.359, with additional citations and dates from H. Pieper, "Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi," Mathematics in Berlin (2012) p.46

World, Mathematics, Question, Nature

“In a picture every part will be visible and will play the role conferred upon it, be it principal or secondary. All that is not useful in the picture is detrimental.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Parting

“Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others… a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as Pacific.”

James A. Michener book Hawaii

Hawaii (1959)

World, Water, Change

“Leibnitz, the great mathematician, published his 'Protogaea' in 1680. He imagined this planet to have been originally a burning luminous mass, and that ever since its creation it has been undergoing gradual refrigeration. Nearly all the matter of the earth was at first encompassed by fire. When the outer crust had at length cooled down sufficiently to allow the vapors to be condensed, they fell and formed a universal ocean, investing the globe, and covering the loftiest mountains. Further consolidation produced rents, vacuities, and subterranean caverns, and the ocean, rushing in to fill them, was gradually lowered. The principal feature of this theory, the gradual diminution of the original heat, and of an ancient universal ocean, were adopted by Buffon and De Luc, and entered under different modifications, into a great number of succeeding systems.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 45
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Imagination, Mountain, Universe

“Never - never in my whole life - has my head spun as much from a book as it did with Rosenberg’s Myth. Not because his writings were exceptionally profound, difficult to comprehend or emotionally overwhelming, but because Clemens hammered on my head with the book for minutes on end. (Clemens and Weser were the principal torturers of the Jews in Dresden, and they were generally differentiated as the Hitter and the Spitter.) ‘How dare a Jewish pig like you presume to read a book of this kind?’ Clemens yelled. To him it seemed like the desecration of a consecrated wafer. ‘How dare you have a book here from the lending library?’ Only the fact that the volume had demonstrably been borrowed in the name of my Aryan wife, and, moreover, that the sheet of notes which accompanied it was torn up without being deciphered, saved me at the time from the concentration camp.”

Victor Klemperer book LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

Source: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich) (1947), p. 12.

Life, Books, Time, Reading

“Since 1968, the Baath have been trashing the only idea that can hold the great social diversity of Iraq together: the idea of Iraq. Their answer to the question "Who am I?" was: You are either one of us, or you are dead. True to their word, they killed anyone who dared to say he was a Kurd or a Shiite or a leftist, or a democrat and a liberal. Contrary to what many Iraqi Shiites tend to think nowadays, the Baath never wanted to build a Sunni confessional state in Iraq. Anti-Shiite sectarianism was introduced on a large scale after the uprising of 1991. The state that the Baath built in Iraq up until the 1991 Gulf War was worse than sectarian. It thrived on the distrust, suspicion and fear that it went about inculcating in everyone. In this sense it was consistently egalitarian. Atomizing society by breeding hate and a thirst for revenge was the regime's highest ambition and principal tool of social control. Every Iraqi -- Kurd or Arab, Muslim or Christian, Shiite or Sunni -- became both complicit in the Baathist enterprise and its victim at the same time.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

Hate, War, Fear, Idea

“Industrial age companies created sharp distinctions between two groups of employees. The intellectual elite—managers and engineers—used their analytical skills to design products and processes, select and manage customers, and supervise day-to-day operations. The second group was composed of the people who actually produced the products and delivered the services. This direct labor work force was a principal factor of production for industrial age companies, but used only their physical capabilities, not their minds. They performed tasks and processes under direct supervision of white-collar engineers and managers. At the end of the twentieth century, automation and productivity have reduced the percentage of people in the organization who perform traditional work functions, while competitive demands have increased the number of people performing analytic functions: engineering, marketing, management, and administration. Even individuals still involved in direct production and service delivery are valued for their suggestions on how to improve quality, reduce costs, and decrease cycle times…
Now all employees must contribute value by what they know and by the information they can provide. Investing in, managing, and exploiting the knowledge of every employee have become critical to the success of information age companies”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 5-6

People, Age, Knowledge, Time

“Wilhelm von Humboldt… stated that the structure of language expresses the inner life of its speakers: "Man lives with the world about him, principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it."”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Word Play (1974)

Life, World

“The principal impact of foreign enterprise on the development of the underdeveloped countries lies in hardening and strengthening the sway of merchant capitalism, in slowing down and indeed preventing its transformation into industrial capitalism.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Six, Towards A Morphology Of Backwardness, I, p. 194

Country

“[ A Jew] should make Torah his principal occupation and his work his casual one. He should minimize his business pursuits and occupy himself with Torah. And he should remove fleeting pleasures from his heart, and work each day enough to maintain himself. … The rest of the day and night, he should occupy himself with Torah.”

Moses Isserles (1520–1572) Polish rabbi

Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'a, 246:21, as cited in "Separation from the Worldly (Perishut)" http://etzion.org.il/en/separation-worldly-perishut

Pleasure, Business, Heart, Night

“As for Lo Monaco I do not know who he is. With the name Monaco I have heard of Bayern Monaco (Munich) and the Monaco GP, the Tibetan Monaco (Monk), and the Principality of Monaco. I have never heard of any others.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

Chelsea FC Source: http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2009/02/23/1122426/italy-v-england-10-classic-jose-mourinho-quotes

“The principal way that cognitive science can contribute to epistemology, I claim, is to identify basic belief-forming, or problem-solving processes. Once identified, these processes would be examined by primary epistemology according to the evaluative dimensions and standards adduced in Part I.”

Alvin Goldman (1938) American philosopher

Alvin Goldman (1986), Epistemology and Cognition. p. 81

Way, Problem, Science, Parting

“The current fascination among Muslims with the history of the Crusades, the vast literature on the subject, both academic and popular, and the repeated inferences drawn from the final extinction of the Crusading principalities throw some light on attitudes in this matter. Islam from its inception is a religion of power, and in the Muslim world view it is right and proper that power should be wielded by Muslims and Muslims alone. Others may receive the tolerance, even the benevolence, of the Muslim state, provided that they clearly recognize Muslim supremacy. That Muslims should rule over non-Muslims is right and normal. That non-Muslims should rule over Muslims is an offense against the laws of God and nature, and this is true whether in Kashmir, Palestine, Lebanon, or Cyprus. Here again, it must be recalled that Islam is not conceived as a religion in the limited Western sense but as a community, a loyalty, and a way of life—and that the Islamic community is still recovering from the traumatic era when Muslim governments and empires were overthrown and Muslim peoples forcibly subjected to alien, infidel rule.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Life, God, People, World

“Then there are the phones designed for East Asian sensibilities. The same region that brought us the selfie stick also brought us Oppo, a company whose phone’s principal selling points include a high-quality camera and custom software that automatically airbrushes photos with faces in them. The ad campaigns emphasize a particularly performative form of femininity, since, in a nice touch, the software makes a guess about the gender of the subject—everyone gets smoother skin, but only the ladies get their lips reddened. Despite successful rollouts in Thailand and Korea, Oppo has not made much of a dent in markets outside East Asia. Their U. S. launch was a bust.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream (2015)

Photo, Success

“Nowadays, the phenomenon (of division of labor) has developed so generally it is obvious to all. We need have no further illusions about the tendencies of modern industry; it advances steadily towards powerful machines, towards great concentrations of forces and capital, and consequently to the extreme division of labor. Occupations are infinitely separated and specialized, not only inside the factories, but each product is itself a specialty dependent upon others. Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill still hoped that agriculture, at least, would be an exception to the rule, and they saw it as the last resort of small-scale industry. Although one must be careful not to generalize unduly in such matters, nevertheless it is hard to deny today that the principal branches of the agricultural industry are steadily being drawn into the general movement. Finally, business itself is ingeniously following and reflecting in all its shadings the infinite diversity of industrial enterprises; and, while this evolution is realizing itself with unpremeditated spontaneity, the economists, examining its causes and appreciating its results, far from condemning or opposing it, uphold it as necessary. They see in it the supreme law of human societies and the condition of their progress.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 39; Second paragraph

Law, Hope, Business, Dependency

“The principal element of Suprematism in painting, as in architecture, is its liberation from all social or materialist tendencies. Through Suprematism, art comes into its pure and unpolluted form. It has acknowledged the decisive fact of the nonobjective character of sensibility. It is no longer concerned with illusion.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

As quoted in Marc Chagall, – a Biography, Sidney Alexander, Cassell, London, 1978, p. 194
1921 - 1930

Art, Decision, Painting

“Many of the principal theoreticians of Fascism, as we have seen, had been schooled in Marxism and, like Giovanni Gentile, demonstrated a competence in the material that won the admiration of Lenin himself. The fact was that the philosophical neo-idealism that served Fascism as its normative foundation shared its origins with orthodox Marxism through their common connection to Hegelianism… Like Marx, Gentile rejected the ‘liberal’ conviction that human beings are best understood as independent, self-sufficient monads, possessed of inherent freedoms, interacting only at their conveniences.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 166

School, Freedom

“Morphy's principal strength does not rest upon his power of combination but in his position play and his general style…. Beginning with la Bourdonnais to the present, and including Lasker, we find that the greatest stylist has been Morphy. Whence the reason, although it might not be the only one, why he is generally considered the greatest of all.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

José Raúl Capablanca, in Pablo Morphy by V. F. Coria and L. Palau.
About

“I, for one, have been singled out for particularly bilious and venomous assaults. These criticisms, as near as I can tell, and I admit that it is rare that I take notice of this calumny, have little to do with any particular opinion, though each opinion does provide one more occasion to criticize. Rather, the principal problem seems to be a deeper antecedent offense: I have no right to think the way I do because I'm black.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Way, Problem, Thinking

“The essential parts of Christianity are the articles of faith by the denial or ignorance of which we cease to be Christians. The principal of these are: the spiritual deliverance through the suffering and death of Christ; Resurrection from death in confirmation of the sufficient suffering of Christ; and, the return of Christ for reward and punishment, as the fruit and consequence of the deliverance. He who grapples with or disproves these first principles attacks the substance (or essence) of the object.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 69

Death, Faith, Suffering, Christ

“There are no 'classics' of crime and detection. Not one. Within its frame of reference, which is the only way it should be judged, a classic is a piece of writing which exhausts the possibilities of its form and can never be surpassed. No story or novel of mystery has done that yet. Few have come close. Which is one of the principal reasons why otherwise reasonable people continue to assault the citadel.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

People, Way

“A very eminent writer has observed, that "the conversion of the Gentile world, whether we consider the difficulties attending it, the opposition made to it, the wonderful work wrought to accomplish it, or the happy effects and consequences of it, may be considered as a more illustrious evidence of God's power, than even our Saviour's miracles of casting out devils, healing the sick, and raising the dead." Indeed, a miracle said to have been wrought without any attending circumstances to justify such an exertion of divine power, could not easily be rendered credible; and our author's argument proves no more. If it were related, that about 1700 years ago, a man was raised from the dead, without its answering any other end than that of restoring him to life, Iconfess that no degree of evidence could induce me tobelieve it; but if the moral government of God appeared in that event, and there were circumstances attending it which could not be accounted for by any human means, the fact becomes credible. When two extraordinary events are thus connected, the proof of one established the truth of the other. Our author has reasoned upon the fact as standing alone, in which case it would not be easy to disprove some of his reasoning; but the fact should be considered in a moral view - as connected with the establishment of a pure religion, and it then becomes credible. In the proof of any circumstance, we must consider every principle which tends to establish it; whereas our author, by considering the case of a man said to have been raised from the dead, simpli in a physical point of view, without any reference to a moral end, endavours to show that it cannot be rendered credible; and, from such principles, we may admit his conclusions without affecting the credibility of Christianity. The general principle on which he establishes his argument, is not the great foundation upon which the evidence of Christianity rests. He says, "Notestimony can be sufficient to establish a miracle, unless it be of such a kind, that the falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endavours to prove." Now this reasoning, at furthest, can only be admitted in those cases where the fact has nothing but testimony to establish it. But the proofs of Christianity do not rest simply upon the testimony of its first promulgators, and that of those who were affterwards the instruments of communicating it; but they rest principally upon the acknowledged and very extraordinary affects which were produced by the preaching of a few unlearned, obscure persons, who taught "Christ crucified;" and it is upon these indisuptable matters of ffact which we reason; and when the effects are totally unaccountable upon any principle which we can collect from the operation of human means, we must either admit miracles, or admit an effect without an adequate cause. Also, when the proof of any position depends upon arguments drawn from various sources, all concutring to establish its turh, to select some one circumstance, and atrempt to show that that alone is not sufficient to render the fact credible, and thence infer that it is not ture, is a conclusion not to be admitted. But it is thus that our author has endavoured to destroy the credibiliry of Christianity, the evidences of which depend upon a great variety of circumstances and facts which are indisputably true, all cooperating to confirm its truth; but an examination of these falls not whithin the plan here proposed. He rests all his arguments upon the extraordinary nature of the fact, considered alone by itself; for a common fact, with the same evidence, would immediately be admitted. I have endavoured to show, that the extraordinary nature, as much as the mosst common events are necessary to fulfill the usual dispensations of Providence, and therefore the Deity was then direted by the same motive as in a more ordinary case, that of affording us such assitance as our moral condition renders necessary. In the establishment of a pur religion, the proof of its divine origin may require some very extraordinary circumstances which may never afterwards be requisite, and accordingly we find that they have not happened. Here is therefore a perfect concistencty in the operation of the Deity, in his moral government, and not a violation of the laws of nature: Secondly, the fact is immediately connected with others which are indisputably true, and which, without the supossition of the truth of that fact, would be, at least, equally miraculous. Thus I conceive the reasoning of our author to be totally inconclusive; and the argumentss which have been employed to prove the fallacy of his conclusions, appear at the same time, fully to justify our belief in, and prove the moral certainty of, our holy religion.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 27; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA262," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 262-263

Life, God, Happiness, Truth

“By learning to yield to the loving authority… of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority which will confront him later in his life — his teachers, school principal, police, neighbors and employers.”

James Dobson (1936) Evangelical Christian psychologist, author, and radio broadcaster.

From Dare to Discipline discussed on Good-Natured Child Needs His Share of Parents' Attention, Focus on the Family, 11/21/2004
2004

Love, Life, School, Parent

“Thus, all unknown quantities can be expressed in terms of a single quantity, whenever the problem can be constructed by means of circles and straight lines, or by conic sections, or even by some other curve of degree not greater than the third or fourth.
But I shall not stop to explain this in more detail, because I should deprive you of the pleasure of mastering it yourself, as well as of the advantage of training your mind by working over it, which is in my opinion the principal benefit to be derived from this science. Because, I find nothing here so difficult that it cannot be worked out by anyone at all familiar with ordinary geometry and with algebra, who will consider carefully all that is set forth in this treatise.”

René Descartes book La Géométrie

First Book
La Géométrie (1637)

Pleasure, Problem, Science, Training

“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Speech at a First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Florida General who voiced his faith cleared on major accusations http://www.bpnews.net/18948, June 2003.

People, Guy

“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech. Five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South. They will have none of it there, for they have the power. But shall it be so here?”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Men, Exercises

“My readers, I fear, have like my reviewer been somewhat misled by looking into my concluding essay for the most important proofs of my main position. But there I am dealing with a problem, or with problems, important and intricate, indeed, but still subordinate to this main one, and only auxiliary to my principal aim.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix D: Reply to a Review in the New York Tribune, p.416

Fear, Problem

“Britain sided with the Saudis and other Gulf regimes defining themselves as Islamic, to counter and overthrow secular nationalist regimes, principally in Egypt and Syria. The demise of "Arab nationalism" left a vacuum that was eventually filled by jihadists.”

Mark Curtis (British author) British journalist and historian

Why the UK must rethink its support for Saudi Arabia http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/why-uk-must-rethink-its-support-saudi-arabia-2062603761 (2 March 2018), Middle East Eye.

“The judge smiled. It is not necessary, he said, that the principals here be in possession of the facts concerning their case, for their acts will ultimately accommodate history with or without their understanding. But it is consistent with notions of right principle that these facts—to the extent that they can be readily made to do so—should find a repository in the witness of some third party. Sergeant Aguilar is just such a party and any slight to his office is but a secondary consideration when compared to divergences in that larger protocol enacted by the formal agenda of an absolute destiny. Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter VII

Smile, History, Understanding

“In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man’s capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this –that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"Creative aspect of language use"
Quotes 2000s, 2007-09, (3rd ed., 2009)

Behavior, Imagination

“The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Marlon Brando: The Only Contender, Gary Carey (1985), Ch.13

Money

“The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_III/Apologetic/On_Idolatry/Wide_Scope_of_the_Word_Idolatry, Chapter 1

World

“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal; and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.

God, Pleasure, Music, Thinking

“When I was first elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 2002, I was part of a group of lawmakers who brought common-sense, conservative principals back to Missouri. As I reflect on my time in the State Capitol, I am proud of the legislation my fellow lawmakers and I have passed. I firmly believe our efforts positively impacted the lives of all Missourians. From day one in the State Capitol, my goal has been job creation. I firmly believe a good job empowers all Missourians to reach their full potential.”

Ron Richard (1947) American politician

2018: An Opportunity to Finish What I Started http://ronrichard.com/2018/01/08/2018-opportunity-finish-started-1818/ (January 8, 2018)

Sense, Effort, Time, Parting

“The Shah described the modernisation of Iran as the principal goal of his life, and yet he adamantly refused to see that there could be no veritable modernisation without democracy. He often referred to his Swiss education as part of his credentials as a profoundly committed democrat, but was, at the same time, convinced that Iran was not yet ripe for democracy, and that it was his duty as 'the father of the nation' to save the Iranians from a slothful life of prayer, pilgrimage, small commerce, backward farming and cottage industry. He also wanted to turn Iran into a second Japan, make her one of the five or six major world powers by the end of the century. He regarded himself as the custodian of Iran's grandeur and freedom and in later years he extended his self-proclaimed mission of saving Iran to include the entire world.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Life, World, Education, Democracy

“Never in the history of the world have there been so many migrants. And almost all of them are migrating from regions where nationality is weak or non-existent to the established nation states of the West. They are not migrating because they have discovered some previously dormant feeling of love or loyalty towards the nations in whose territory they seek a home. On the contrary, few of them identify their loyalties in national terms and almost none of them in terms of the nation where they settle. They are migrating in search of citizenship which is the principal gift of national jurisdictions, and the origin of the peace, law, stability and prosperity that still prevail in the West.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Love, World, Peace, Law

“Take more room, examine my 'Gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole — the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. You must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. For that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. The essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work I may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself I shall find the best way of finishing my work.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 281; About the sculpture The Gates of Hell

Way, Understanding, Light

“Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced.”

James Nasmyth (1808–1890) Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor

Source: James Nasmyth engineer, 1883, p. 87 (p. 221 in 2010 edition)

Time

“Amerika faces no meaningful threat to its security except from those who live within its own territorial borders.
The domestic upheavals of the 1960’s and 70’s taught empire some valuable lessons on just how dangerous an informed and discontent population can be. As a result, and through a steady application of misinformation, carrots, and sticks, empire has worked steadily to drain the focus, resolve, and militancy of the informed and discontented. From that point to this, empire has manufactured a discontinuity in popular struggle, while maintaining continuity in its own growth and consolidation. One of the empire’s principal tools and weapons has been its prisons.”

Kevin Rashid Johnson (1971) American prisoner and social activist

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin Rashid Johnson (2010)

“What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything else;—long arguments on special points between people who differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on certain ultimata [finalities] of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, just as a written constitution is essential to the best social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two persons.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Men, People, Idea, Question

“All civilizations go though similar processes of emergence, rise, and decline. The West differs from other civilizations not in the way it has developed but in the distinctive character of its values and institutions. These include most notably its Christianity, pluralism, individualism, and rule of law, which made it possible for the West to invent modernity, expand throughout the world, and become the envy of other societies. In their ensemble these characteristics are peculiar to the West. Europe, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has said, is “the source — the unique source” of the “ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom. . . . These are European ideas, not Asian, nor African, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except by adoption.” They make Western civilization unique, and Western civilization is valuable not because it is universal but because it is unique. The principal responsibility of Western leaders, consequently, is not to attempt to reshape other civilizations in the image of the West, which is beyond their declining power, but to preserve, protect, and renew the unique qualities of Western civilization. Because it is the most powerful Western country, that responsibility falls overwhelmingly on the United States of America.
To preserve Western civilization in the face of declining Western power, it is in the interest of the United States and European countries … to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 311

World, Law, Way, Democracy

“The third principle [way doing good to another may give pleasure] is the motive: for instance when a man is moved by one whom he loves, to do good to someone: for whatever we do or suffer for a friend is pleasant, because love is the principal cause of pleasure.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

I-II, q. 32, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Love, Pleasure, Way, Motivation

“As for more than twenty years my principal work has been devoted to the ancient literature of India, I cannot but feel a deep and real sympathy for all that concerns the higher interests of the people of that country. Though I have never been in India, I have many friends there, both among the civilians and among the natives, and I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that the publication in England of the ancient sacred writings of the Brahmans, which had never been published in India, and other contributions from different European scholars towards a better knowledge of the ancient literature and religion of India, have not been without some effect on the intellectual and religious movement that is going on among the more thoughtful members of Indian society. I have sometimes regretted that I am not an Englishman, and able to help more actively in the great work of educating and improving the natives. But I do rejoice that this great task of governing and benefiting India should have fallen to one who knows the greatness of that task and all its opportunities and responsibilities, who thinks not only of its political and financial bearings, but has a heart to feel for the moral welfare of those millions of human beings that are, more or less directly, committed to his charge. India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if the funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough. The results of the educational work carried on during the last twenty years are palpable everywhere. They are good and bad, as was to be expected. It is easy to find fault with what is called Young Bengal, the product of English ideas grafted on the native mind. But Young Bengal, with all its faults, is full of promise. Its bad features are apparent everywhere, its good qualities are naturally hidden from the eyes of careless observers.... India can never be anglicized, but it can be reinvigorated. By encouraging a study of their own ancient literature, as part of their education, a national feeling of pride and self-respect will be reawakened among those who influence the large masses of the people. A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with Western ideas, yet retaining its native spirit and character. The two things hang together. In order to raise the character of the vernaculars, a study of the ancient classical language is absolutely necessary: for from it these modern dialects have branched off, and from it alone can they draw their vital strength and beauty. A new national literature will bring with it a new national life and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed — and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Letter to the Duke of Argyll, published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller

Life, People, Education, Religion

“All Muhammadans are fond of women, who are their principal relaxation and almost their only pleasure.”

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

Manucci, II, 240; quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Storia do Mogor

Women, Pleasure

“There is, I venture to think, no ground for the ordinarily accepted statement of the relation of philosophy to theology and religion. It is usually said that while^hilosophy is the creation of an individual mind, theology or religion is, like folk-lore and language, the product of the collective mind of a people or a race. This is to confuse philosophy with philosophies, a conmion and, it must be admitted, a not unnatural confusion. But while a philosophy is the creation of a Plato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, ^hilosophy itself is, like religion, folk-lore and language, a product of the collective mind of humanity. It is advanced, as these are, by individual additions, interpretations and syntheses, but it is none the less quite istinct from such individual contributions. philosophy is humanity's hold on Totality, and it becomes richer and more helpful as man's intellectual horizon widens, as his intellectual vision grows clearer, and as his insights become more numerous and more sure. Theology is philosophy of a particular type. It is an interpretation of Totality in terms of God and His activities. In the impressive words of Principal Caird, that philosophy which is theology seeks "to bind together objects and events in the links of necessary thought, and to find their last ground and reason in that which comprehends and transcends all— the nature of God Himself." Religion is the apprehension and the adoration of the Grod Whom theology postulates.
If the whole history of philosophy be searched for material with which to instruct the beginner in what philosophy really is and in its relation to theology and religion, the two periods or epochs that stand out above all others as useful for this purpose are Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, and that interpretation of the teachings of Christ by philosophy which gave rise, at the hands of the Church Fathers, to Christian theology. In the first period we see the simple, clear-cut steps by which the mind of Europe was led from explanations that were fairy-tales to a natural, well-analyzed, and increasingly profound interpretation of the observed phenomena of Nature. The process is so orderly and so easily grasped that it is an invaluable introduction to the study of philosophic thinking. In the second period we see philosophy, now enriched by the literally huge contributions of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, intertwining itself about the simple Christian tenets and building the great system of creeds and thought which has immortalized the names of Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Gregory, Jerome and Augustine, and which has given color and form to the intellectual life of Europe for nearly two thousand years. For the student of today both these developments have great practical value, and the astonishing neglect and ignorance of them both are most discreditable.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"

Life, God, People, Religion

“It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interests has been so carefully attended to; and among this later class our merchants and manufactures have been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter VIII, p. 721.

“There is no study more difficult than that of physic: it exceeds, as a science, the comprehension of the human mind: and those who blunder onwards, without attempting to understand what they see, are often very nearly on a level with those, who depend too much on imperfect generalisations, applied to facts, which can scarcely be subjected to any well marked analogy. Hence it may happen, that talents and labour may become useless for want of a proper direction… To assist in furnishing the student with a sufficient direction… is the principal object of this work.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Source: An Introduction to Medical Literature, Including a System of Practical Nosology (1823), p. 2

Understanding, Study, Science, Dependency

“The most reliable and best armed groups of the mass of revolutionary contingents organised to take extreme measures to overcome the famine shall be detailed for dispatch to all stations and all uyezds of the principal grain supplying gubernias. These groups, with the participation of railwaymen delegated by local railway committees, shall be authorised, firstly, to control the movement of grain freights; secondly, take charge of the collection and storage of grain; thirdly, adopt the most extreme revolutionary measures to fight speculators and to requisition grain stocks. When making any record of requisition, arrest or execution, the revolutionary contingents shall summon at least six witnesses to be selected from the poorest section of the population closest at hand.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“Meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet With Delegates From the Food Supply Organisations” (27 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 503.
1910s

Fight

“The short man was all of a piece, but there was nothing reassuring in this; it was a piece of the same material that too many high school principals, boys’ camp directors, and military and naval officers are made of: a texture or quality often dignified by the description, “ability to command”—the desire to bully, override, bear down—the capacity to do so by virtue of office—the habit of having done so for a long time and the confidence of continuing to do so for a long time.”

Avram Davidson book Masters of the Maze

Source: Masters of the Maze (1965), Chapter 7 (p. 85)

School, Confidence, Boy, Time

“A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs—the latter two groups having been the principal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's 'broad constructionist' reading of the Constitution.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

As quoted in The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court (2001) by John Dean; quoted in an article http://slate.msn.com/id/117140/ at Slate. Books, articles, and speeches

Reading

“Whatever covering is given to any part of the country, except where the principal force is stationed, should be so calculated as to be able to check the enemy's small ravaging parties, and yet not be an object worthy any considerable movement of theirs.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Parting, Country

“I want to see the ranks of employers throw up a man who will lead his men, making it the principal task of his life to be the mediator in all subjects affecting their work, whilst standing up, as he is entitled to do, for the order he represents. There can be no finer career for a young man than to go into business, not with the object only of making a fortune…but with the idea of making his contribution towards getting the whole of these relations on a firmer footing. There can be no finer work for men who, as boys, went out to France, and learnt what a British regiment was, than to try and get something of the spirit of the British regiment into their industry.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 68-69.
1925

Life, Men, Boy, Idea

“There are ambiguities in the art of painting but they are the ambiguities of a fine precision: the discovered fact of the image containing at the same time the reverberations of the unknown, the truly mysterious… I would take this further and add that painting is itself precise in its ideas. In the sense that the image is the idea in its purist form.* [*“The image is a principal of our knowledge. It is that from which our intellectual activity begins, not as a passing stimulus but as an enduring foundation””

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

St. Thomas Aquinas, Opus XVI]
X magazine (1959-62)

Art, Idea, Knowledge, Sense

“Before I came into the department, your Excellency was obliged often to stand Quarter-master. However capable the principal was of doing his duty, he was hardly ever with you. The line and the staff were at war with each other. The country had been plundered in a way that would now breed a kind of civil war between the staff and the inhabitants. The manner of my engaging in this business, and your Excellency's declaration to the Committee of Congress, that you would stand Quarter-master no longer, are circumstances which I wish may not be forgotten; as I may have occasion, at some future day, to appeal to your Excellency for my own justification. One thing I can say, with truth and sincerity, that I have conducted the business with as much prudence and economy, as if my private fortune had been answerable for the disbursements. And I believe your Excellency will do me the justice to say, the department has cooperated with your measures as far as circumstances were to be governed by me; and this you had reason to apprehend would not have been the case had I not taken direction of the business. And here, in justice to my colleagues, I shall mention that I think them entitled to your Excellency's personal esteem, from the warmth of their wishes, and a desire to promote your ease and convenience.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

War, Truth, Justice, Way

“A girl of seven or ten years old is held to be the equal partner in a crime where another and a stronger is the principal; because she is in so many ways hampered and harmed by laws and customs pertaining to the past, we reach out hands of help especially to her that she may overtake the swift-marching procession of progress, for its sake that it may not slacken its speed on her account as much as for hers that she be not left behind.
I brought to the last Council our petition to Congress for the protection of women, which was responded to by raising the age of consent from ………. to sixteen years.”

Frances Willard (1839–1898) American suffragist

February 1891 https://prohibition.osu.edu/willard/speech

Women, Age, Law, Way

“As for the clergy — No — If I say a word against them, I'll be shot. — I have no desire, — and besides, if I had, — I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, — with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account, — and therefore, 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, — and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book III, Ch. 20.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life, Men, Soul, Drawing

“By any yardstick, a higher percentage of New York City high school students are graduating now than at any time in decades. The rate has risen every year during this administration and is an important validation of our reforms, w:Chancellor Klein’s leadership, and the hard work of our students, principals, and teachers. The rate obviously remains far too low, but the gains demonstrate that our hard work to raise student achievement is paying off, and we are beginning to turn around a failing system.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/education/mayor_bloomberg_announces_that_high_school_graduaton_rate_reaches_historic_high_of_60
Education

School, Teachers, Time

“No one ever squared the circle with so much genius, or, excepting his principal object, with so much success.”

Jean-Étienne Montucla (1725–1799) French mathematician

Attributed to Montucla in Augustus De Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, (London, 1872), p. 96; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book, (1914) p. 366
About Gregory St. Vincent, described by De Morgan as "the greatest of circle-squarers, and his investigations led him into many truths: he found the property of the arc of the hyperbola which led to Napier's logarithms being called hyperbolic."

Success

“It is through an “intimate cessation of all intellectual operations” that the mind is laid bare. If nor, discourse maintains it in its little complacency. … The difference between inner experience and philosophy resides principally in this: that in experience, … what counts is no longer the statement of wind, but the wind.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 13

“What we mean by the laws of nature, are those laws which are deduced from that series of events, which, by divine appointment, follow each other in the moral and physical world; the former of which we shall here have occasion principally to consider, the present question altogether, respecting the moral government of God — a consideration which our author has entirely neglected, in his estimation of the credibility of miracles. Examining the question therefore upon this principle, it is manifest, that the extraordinary nature of the fact is no ground for disbelief, provided such a fact, in, a moral point of view, was, from the condition of man, become necessary; for in that case, the Deky, by dispensing his assistance in proportion to our wants, acted upon the same principle as in his more 'ordinary operations. For however ' opposite the physical effects may be, if their moral tendency be the same, they form a part of the jmoral law. Now in those actions which are called miracles, the Deity is directed by the same moral principle as in his usual dispensations; and therefore being influenced by the same motive to accomplish the same end, the laws of God's moral government are not violated, such laws being established by the motives and the ends produced, and not by the means employed. To prove therefore the moral laws to be the same in those actions called miraculous, as in common events, it is not the actions thetnselves which are to be considered, but the principles by which they were directed, and their consequences, for if these be the same, the Deity acts by the same laws. And here, moral analogy will be found to confirm the truth of the miracles recorded in scripture. But as the moral government of God is directed by motives which lie beyond the reach of human investigation, we have no principles by which we can judge concerning the probability of the happening of any new event which respects the moral world; we cannot therefore pronounce any extraordinary event of that nature to be a violation of the moral law of God's dispensations; but we can nevertheless judge of its agreement with that law, so far as it has fallen under our observation. But our author leaves out the consideration of God's moral government, and reasons simply -on the facts which arc said to have nappened, without any reference to an end; we will therefore examine how far his conclusions are just upon this principle.
He defines miracles to be "a violation of the laws of nature;" he undoubtedly means the physical laws, as no part of his reasoning has any reference to them in a moral point of view. Now these laws must be deduced, either from his own view of events only, or from that, and testimony jojntly; and if testimony beallowed on one part, it ought also to be admitted on the other, granting that there is no impossibility in the fact attested. But the laws by which the Deity governs the universe can, at best, only be inferred from the whole series of his dispensations from the beginning of the world; testimony must therefore necessarily be admitted in establishing these laws. Now our author, in deducing the laws of nature, rejects all well authenticated miraculous events, granted to be possible, and therefore not altogether incredible and to be rejected without examination, and thence establishes a law to prove against their credibility; but the proof of a position ought to proceed upon principles which are totally independent of any supposition of its being either true or falser. His conclusion therefore is not deduced by just reasoning from acknowledged principles, but it is a necessary consequence of his own arbitrary supposition. "Tis a miracle," says he, "that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country." Now, testimony, confirmed by every proof which can tend to establish a true matter of fact, asserts that such an event; has happened. But our author argues against the credibility of this, because it is contrary to the laws of nature; and in establishing these laws, he rejects all such extraordinary facts, although they are authenticated by all the evidence which such facts can possibly admit of; taking thereby into consideration, events of that kind only which have fallen within the sphere of his own observations, as if the whole series of God's dispensations were necessarily included in the course of a few years. But who shall thus circumscribe the operations of divine power and infinite wisdom, and say, "Hitherto shall thou go, and no further."”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Before he rejected circumstances of this kind in establishing the laws of nature, he should, at least, have shewn, that we have not all that evidence for them which we might "have had" upon supposition that they were true ; he should also have shewn, in a moral point of view, that the events were inconsistent with the ordinary operations of Providence ; and that there was no end to justify the means. Whereas, on the contrary, there is all the evidence for them which a real matter of fact can possibly have ; they are perfectly consistent with all the moral dispensations of Providence and at the same time that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is most unexceptionably attested, we discover a moral intention in the miracle, which very satisfactorily accounts for that exertion of divine power? Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 48; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA259," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 259-261

Life, Wisdom, God, Truth

“When I look at the man at the head of the French monarchy, surrounded as he is with all the pomp of power, and all the pride of victory, distributing kingdoms to his family, and principalities to his followers; seeming, as he sits upon his throne, to have reached the summit of human ambition, the pinnacle of earthly happiness; and when I follow him into his closet, or to his bed, and contemplate the anguish with which his solitude must be tortured, by recollections of the blood he has spilt, and the oppressions he has committed.”

Samuel Romilly (1757–1818) British politician

Slave Trade Bill speech (1807)

Happiness, Family, Solitude, Victory

“Agency theory is an important, yet controversial, theory. This paper reviews agency theory, its contributions to organization theory, and the extant empirical work and develops testable propositions. The conclusions are that agency theory (a) offers unique insight into information systems, outcome uncertainty, incentives, and risk and (b) is an empirically valid perspective, particularly when coupled with complementary perspectives. The principal recommendation is to incorporate an agency perspective in studies of the many problems having a cooperative structure.”

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt American economist

Source: "Agency theory: An assessment and review," 1989, p. 57 Abstract

Problem, Study

“…WHEREAS, IN THE PAST, THE POINT OF DISAGREEMENT HAS BEEN BETWEEN DISSONANCE AND CONSONANCE, IT WILL BE, IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, BETWEEN NOISE AND SO-CALLED MUSICAL SOUNDS.
THE PRESENT METHODS OF WRITING MUSIC, PRINCIPALLY THOSE WHICH EMPLOY HARMONY AND ITS REFERENCE TO PARTICULAR STEPS IN THE FIELD OF SOUND, WILL BE INADEQUATE FOR THE COMPOSER, WHO WILL BE FACED WITH THE ENTIRE FIELD OF SOUND.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage, in: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); SILENCE; lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, CREDO/3
1930s

Music, Past, Future

“.. whatever may have been the style and title, the sovereign ruler was there, and accordingly the court established itself at once with all its due accompaniments of pomp, insipidity, and emptiness. Caesar appeared in public not in the robe of the consuls which was bordered with purple stripes, but in the robe wholly of purple which was reckoned in antiquity as the proper regal attire, and received, sitting on his golden chair and without rising from it, the solemn procession of the senate. The festivals in his honour commemorative of birthday, of victories, and of vows, filled the calendar. When Caesar came to the capital, his principal servants marched forth in trips to great distances so as to meet and escort him. To be near to him began to be of such importance, that the rents rose in the quarter of the city where he lived. Personal interviews with him were rendered so difficult by the multitude of individuals soliciting audience, that Caesar found himself compelled in many cases to communicate even with his intimate friends in writing, and that persons even of the highest rank had to wait for hours in the ante-chamber. People felt, more clearly than was agreeable to Caesar himself, that they no longer approached a fellow-citizen. There arose a monarchical aristocracy, which was a remarkable manner at once new and old, and which had sprung out of the idea of casting into the shade the aristocracy of the oligarchy by that of the royalty, the nobility of the patriciate. The patrician body still subsisted, although without essential privileges as an order, in the character of a close aristocratic guild; but as it could receive no new gentes it had dwindled away more and more in the course of centuries, and in Caesar's time there were not more than fifteen or sixteen patrician gentes still in existence. Caesar, himself sprung from one of them, got the right of creating new patrician gentes conferred on the Imperator by decree of the people, and so established, in contrast to the republican nobility, the new aristocracy of the patriciate, which most happily combined all the requisites of a monarchichal aristocracy - the charm of antiquity, entire dependence on the government, and total insignificance. On all sides the new sovereignty revealed itself.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part 2. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The New Court.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

People, Communication, Idea, Birthday