“Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.”
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Category Archives: quotes
quote o’ the day: Oscar Wilde, on Canada
“So this is Winnipeg.
I can tell it’s not Paris.”
Oscar Wilde, on his North American tour.
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Ask the philosophers: the 11 greatest philosophical quotations
But they left out my favorite, from Camus: “It is the obligation of the intelligent to oppress the stupid, otherwise they will take over the world.”
Too late. That’s what three decades of Relativism gets you.
Here, from Mental Floss via Neatorama, are the 11 greatest philosophical quotations, with arguably enlightening commentary. Bonus pronounciation guide, for those of you who prefer to pronounce things as if you were still living in Bavaria…here’s a tip: I was born near Paris, but I pronounce it “Pare-iss” not “Pay-ree” because I do not live in France. I do not pronounce Indonesia with five syllables either, although you do once you’re there. That goes double for idiomatic English names (eg “It’s spelt ‘SMITH’ but has been pronounced “Williams” since the Battle of Hastings…”) If you do not live in France or Germany or Worcestershire or Bandaniera either, making a point of pronouncing things like the natives do simply makes people write you off (correctly) as one of those beret-wearing pretentiati. And when raincoaster here tells you you’re being pretentious, you know you’re out of bounds.
Ahem.
3. “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” – Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
Referring to the original state of nature, a hypothetical past before civilization, Hobbes saw no reason to be nostalgic.Whereas Rousseau said, “Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains,” Hobbes believed we find ourselves living a savage, impossible life without education and the protection of the state. Human nature is bad: we’ll prey on one another in the most vicious ways. No doubt the state imposes on our liberty in an overwhelming way. Yet Hobbes’ claim was that these very chains were absolutely crucial in protecting us from one another.
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Edmund Burke on power: quote o’ the day
From the book The Orientalist, by Tom Reiss.
Lev concludes his indictment of the Soviet secret police by recalling Edmund Burke‘s indictment, in Parliament, of Warren Hastings, the governor-general of India. Hastings had been impeached on a charge of oppressing the natives, and argued in his own defense that his actions could not be considered illegal because he had been granted arbitrary power in India.
To this the British conservative and hater of revolutionary injustice – but also of all kinds of injustice, whether revolutionary or not – replied:
“My lords, the East India company have not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give…
Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal.”
quote o’ the day: Andy Warhol on self-determination
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
US artist (1928 – 1987)
stolen from Eternal Catharsis
raincoaster 