A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.
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A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at read more
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.
Never soar aloft on an enemy's pinions.
Never soar aloft on an enemy's pinions.
Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling read more
Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.
Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 ft/sec, is a cow that read more
Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 ft/sec, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter.
The collective matrix of a science at a given time is determined by a kind of establishment, which includes universities, read more
The collective matrix of a science at a given time is determined by a kind of establishment, which includes universities, learned societies, and, more recently, the editorial offices of technical journals. Like other establishments, they are consciously or unconsciously bent on preserving the status quo- partly because unorthodox innovations are a threat to their authority, but also because of the deeper fear that their laboriously erected an intellectual edifice might collapse under the impact.
The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it read more
The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure from it.
Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem read more
Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of read more
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
Literacy is not, as it is considered in our schools, a PORTION of education. It IS education. It is at read more
Literacy is not, as it is considered in our schools, a PORTION of education. It IS education. It is at once the ability AND the inclination of the mind to find knowledge, to pursue understanding, and out of knowledge and understanding, not out of received attitudes and values or emotional responses, however "worthy," to make judgments.
