The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
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However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is read more
However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as "the most anti-social and evil of all passions.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental read more
Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.
Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of read more
Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of phenomenological adequacy, inner consistency, and practical-moral consequences. Reason may err, but it can be moral. If we must err, let it be on the side of our creativity, our freedom, our betterment.
Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era read more
Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
