# Commonplace Book ## Crime and Punishment “But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself.” Page 11 “Everything with them is ‘the influence of the environment,’ and nothing else. Their favorite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organized, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it’s not supposed to exist!” Page 203 “It’s not a question of suffering for someone’s benefit, but simply ‘one must suffer.’ If they suffer at the hands of the authorities, so much the better.” Page 237 “What have you done—what have you done to yourself?” she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tightly. Page 323 “Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.” Page 330 He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Page 331 ## Atlas Shrugged “What for?” It was the first question he asked about any activity proposed to him—and nothing would make him act, if he found no valid answer...Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly. “Let’s find out” was the motive he gave to Dagny and Eddie for anything he undertook, or “Let’s make it.” These were his only forms of enjoyment. Page 93 Once, an elderly professor of literature, Mrs. Taggart’s friend, saw them on top of a junk pile in a junkyard, dismantling the carcass of an automobile. He stopped, shook his head and said to Francisco, “A young man of your position ought to spend his time in libraries, absorbing the culture of the world.” “What do you think I’m doing?” asked Francisco. Page 93 “I’m studying mining and mineralogy, because I must be ready for the time I run d'Anconia Copper...” “I’m studying electrical engineering, because power companies are the best customers of d’Anconia Copper...” “I’m going to study philosophy, because I’ll need it to protect d’Anconia Copper...” Page 94 Francisco seemed to laugh at things because he saw something much greater. Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great. Page 94 “That boy is vulnerable. He has too great a capacity for joy. What will he do with it in a world where there’s so little occasion for it?” Page 96 The world of chance—of families, meals, schools, people, of aimless people dragging the load of some unknown guilt—was not theirs, could not change him, could not matter. He and she had never spoken of things that happened to them, but only of what they thought and of what they would do. Page 97 “Francisco, what’s the most depraved type of human being?” “The man without a purpose.” Page 98 He raised himself, picked up a few marbles and sat shaking them absently in his hand; they clicked with the soft, clear sound of good stone. She realized suddenly that playing with those marbles was not a deliberate affection on his part; it was restlessness; he could not remain inactive for long. Page 119 “Why are they doing everything in their power to make it impossible for her to succeed, when she’s all they’ve got standing between them and destruction? Why are they torturing her in return for saving their lives?” Page 205 It was a strange foreshortening between sight and touch, she thought, between wish and fulfillment, between—the words clicked sharply in her mind after a startled stop—between spirit and body. First, the thought—then the purposeful motion down the straight line of single track to a chosen goal. Could one have any meaning without the other? Wasn’t it evil to wish without moving—or to move without aim? Pages 225-226 The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud—he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil. Page 283 “What’s love darling, if it’s not self-sacrifice?...What’s self-sacrifice, unless one sacrifices that which is one’s most precious and most important?” Page 285 “You see, Dr. Stadler, people don’t want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they’ll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue—a highly intellectual virtue—out of what they know to be their sin, weakness and their guilt...That is the road to popularity.” Page 322 “Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own—they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal—for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire...They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don’t know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear...Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don’t respect?” Page 333 “To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money—and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement.” Page 384 “Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.” Page 387 “The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.” Page 404 “Man’s motive power is his moral code.” Page 422 “An issue of guilt, he thought, had to rest on his own acceptance of the code of justice that pronounced him guilty.” Page 430 “The man who despises himself tires to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures—which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.” Page 453 “He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself...The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.” Page 453 “One editor who’d open his trap at the wrong time could do us more harm than ten disgruntled millionaires.” Page 493 “There is no way to disarm any man...except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt...But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards.” Page 506 “All nodded approval. None looked at his neighbor.” Page 507 “But nothing can justify injustice.” Page 522 “Robin Hood...was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I’m the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich—or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.” Page 532 “The cooking of meals, she thought, is like the feeding of coal to an engine for the sake of a great run, but what would be the imbecile torture of coaling an engine that had no run to make? It is not proper for man’s life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles dropping off like zeroes behind him—man’s life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each, leading to the next and to a single growing sum.” Page 561 “They know that there’s no such thing as a lousy job—only lousy men who don’t care to do it.” Page 661 “What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There’s two ways one can do it: either by producing more or producing it faster. And that’s what I’m doing: I’m manufacturing time.” Page 662 “Any man who’s afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who’s in a business where he doesn’t belong.” Page 666 “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Page 671 “You want to be a man like Hank Rearden without the necessity of being what he is.” Page 810 “‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and keep, ‘virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. ‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what?” Page 926 “A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive.” Page 927 “Why is it your moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you?” Page 944 “The man below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration.” Page 945 “The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.” Page 973 “I don’t pay for the removal of threats. I don’t buy my life from anyone.” Page 1009 ## The War of Art In order for a book (or any project or enterprise) to hold our attention for the length of time it takes to unfold itself, it has to plug into some internal perplexity or passion that is of paramount importance to us. Page 46 When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own. Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. Page 38 Resistance presents us with a series of plausible, rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work. Page 55 It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life. Page 61 Professionals: 1) Show up every day. 2) Show up no matter what. 3) Stay on the job all day. 4) Commit over the long haul. 5) The stakes are high and real. 6) Accept remuneration for our labor. 7) Do not over identify with our jobs. 8) Master the technique of our jobs. 9) Have a sense of humor about our jobs. 10) Receive praise or blame in the real world. Pages 69-70 To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride, To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness. Page 74 The professional...understands delayed gratification. Page 75 He is on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown. Page 77 The sign of the amateur is over glorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work. Page 78 He knows that once he gets out into the action, his fear will recede and he’ll be ok. Page 79 He knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow. Page 80 The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven. Page 81 The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. Page 84 The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. Page 87 Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page...The professional blows critics off. He doesn’t even hear them. Page 93 She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect. Page 94 The professional senses who has served his time and who hasn’t. Page 96 [Each Monday] I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself. Page 98 Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I’d been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath. Rest in peace motherfucker. Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.” Page 112 The moment a person learns he’s got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor’s office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all-important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance. Page 132 Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it...If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business. Page 146 But the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life. The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake. Pages 150-151 A hack, he says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for...In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, What can I make a deal for? Page 152 What are the qualities of a territory? 1) A territory provides sustenance. 2) A territory sustains us without any external input. 3) A territory can only be claimed alone. 4) A territory can only be claimed by work. 5) A territory returns exactly what you put in...What’s your territory? Page 154-155 What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing. Page 157 How can we tell if our orientation is territorial or hierarchical? One way is to ask ourselves, If I were feeling really anxious, what would I do?...If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? Page 158 We have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor...We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause. Page 161 Then there’s the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. “Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, Fix your attention on the soul. Act and do anyway. Why not give it back? Page 161 Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sustained by God every second, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumb-ass flop and stroke of genius comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets. Page 162 Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. Page 165 ## Walden I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Page 8 By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. Page 9 Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Pages 10-11 As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. Page 11 What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Page 11 Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. Page 12 It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them. Page 14 The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel. Page 14 With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. Page 16 I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden and silver fetters. Page 17 As for clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the questions, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Page 21 It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. Page 23 In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. Page 25 I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three feet wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. Pages 26-27 The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. Page 28 Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Page 32 The effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. Page 33 Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper. Page 34 “But,” says one, “you do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?” I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Page 44 Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,—the boy who had made his own jack knife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this,—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rogers penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers? Page 44 Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy, is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father into debt irretrievably. Page 44 Our inventions are wont to be petty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. Page 44 As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. Pages 44-45 I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. Page 45 No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. Pages 45-46 When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all—looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck—I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. Page 56 It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. Page 56 I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. Page 58 My greatest skill has been to want but little. Page 58 The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other. Page 59 The man who goes alone can start to-day; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off. Page 60 At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. Page 67 A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. Page 67 But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail. Page 69 The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Page 70 I did not need to go out doors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. Page 70 That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. Page 73 Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? Page 74 We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact that the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. Page 74 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Page 74 When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence. Page 78 Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. Page 82 However much we may admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. Page 83 A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. Page 83 Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Page 84 Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience...but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading...what we have to stand on tiptoe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to. Page 85 A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;—and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading.” Page 87 How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. Page 87 New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teacher her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us. Page 89 The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. Page 90 Arrived there, the little house they fill, No looke for entertainment where none was; Rest is their feast, and all things at their will: The noblest mind the best contentment has. Page 114 The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. Page 122 Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth. Page 158 The universe is wider than our views of it. Page 250 Direct your right eye inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography. Page 250 I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. Pages 252-253 I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Page 253 Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Page 255 However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it names...The fault finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is...The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Page 256 Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” Page 257 Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. Page 257 Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. Page 258 ## Didascalicon Selections All the arts of the natural world subserve our knowledge of God, and the lower wisdom—rightly ordered—leads to the higher. Page 255 “They were unwilling to understand how they might do well.” Not knowing and not wishing to know are far different things. Not knowing, to be sure, springs from weakness; but contempt of knowledge springs from a wicked well. There is another sort of man whom nature has enriched with the full measure of ability and to whom she shows an easy way to come at truth. Among these, even granting inequality in the strength of their ability, there is nevertheless not the same virtue or will in all for the cultivation of their natural sense through practice and learning. Many of this sort, caught up in the affairs and cares of this world beyond what is needful or given over to the vices and sensual indulgences of the body, bury the talent of God in earth, seeking from it neither the fruit of wisdom nor the profit of good work. These, assuredly, are completely detestable. Page 256 Just as it is more glorious to lay hold upon wisdom by sheer exertion, even though no resources support one, so to be sure, it is more loathsome to enjoy natural ability and to have plenty of wealth, yet to grow dull in idleness. The things by which every man advances in knowledge are principally two—namely, reading and meditation. Of these, reading holds first place in instruction, and it is of reading that this book treats, setting forth rules for it. For there are three things particularly necessary to learn for reading: first, each man should know what he ought to read; second, in what order he ought to read, that is, what first and what afterwards; and third, in what manner he ought to read. Page 257 “Know thyself,” for surely, if man had not forgotten his origin, he would recognize that everything subject to change is nothing. Page 257 Out of all the sciences above named, the ancients...selected seven to be mastered by those who were to be educated. These seven they considered so to excel all the rest in usefulness that anyone who had been thoroughly schooled in them might afterward come to a knowledge of the others by his own inquiry and effort rather than by listening to a teacher. Page 257 No one of his pupils dared ask the reason behind statements made by him; instead, he was to give credence to the words of the master until he had heard him out, and then, having done this, he would be able to come at the reason of those things himself. We read that some men studied these seven with such zeal that they had them completely in memory, so that whatever writings they subsequently took in hand or whatever questions they proposed for solution or proof, they did not thumb the pages of books to hunt for rules and reasons which the liberal arts might afford for the resolution of a doubtful matter, but at once had the particulars ready by heart. Page 257 We find many who study but few who are wise. Yet it seems to me that the student should take no less care not to expend his effort in useless studies than he should to avoid a lukewarm pursuit of good and useful ones. It is bad to pursue something good negligently; it is worse to expend many labors on an empty thing. Page 258 The arts themselves, without these things that border on them, are able to make the student perfect, while the latter things, without the arts, are capable of conferring no perfection: and this the more especially since the latter have nothing desirable with which to tempt the student except what they have taken over and adapted from the arts; and no one should seek in them anything but what is of the arts. Page 258 Surely the more you collect superfluous details the less you are able to grasp or to retain useful matters. Page 259 We must not say everything we can, lest we say with less effect such things as need saying. Page 259 Do not strike into a lot of by-ways until you know the main roads: you will go along securely when you are not under the fear of going astray. Page 259 Three things are necessary for those who study: natural endowment, practice, and discipline. By natural endowment is meant that they must be able to grasp easily what they hear and to retain firmly what they grasp; by practice is meant that they must cultivate by assiduous effort the natural endowment they have; and by discipline is meant that, by leading a praiseworthy life, they must combine moral behavior with their knowledge. Page 260 Aptitude gathers wisdom, memory preserves it. Page 260 “Please! Spare yourself for my sake—there’s only drudgery in those papers! Go run in the open air!” Page 260 The start of learning, thus, lies in reading, but its consummation lies in meditation; which, if any man will learn to love it very intimately and will desire to be engaged very frequently upon it, renders his life pleasant indeed, and provides the greatest consolation to him in his trials. This especially it is which takes the soul away from the noise of earthly business and makes it have even in this life a kind of foretaste of the sweetness of the eternal quiet. And when, through the things which God has made, a man has learned to seek out and to understand him who has made them all, then does he equally instruct his mind with knowledge and fill it with joy. From this it follows that in meditation is to be found the greatest delight. Page 261 The fountainhead is one, but its derivative streams are many: why follow the windings of the latter? Lay hold upon the source and you have the whole thing. I say this because the memory of man is dull and likes brevity, and, if it is dissipated upon many things, it has less to bestow upon each of them. We ought, therefore, in all that we learn, to gather brief and dependable abstracts to be stored in the little chest of memory, so that later on, when need arises, we can derive everything else from them. These one must often turn over in the mind and regurgitate from the stomach of one’s memory to taste them, lest by long inattention to them, they disappear. I charge you then, my student, not to rejoice a great deal because you have read many things, but because you have been able to retain them. Otherwise there is no profit in having read or understood much. And for this reason I call to mind again what I said earlier: those who devote themselves to study require both aptitude and memory. Page 262 “A humble mind, eagerness to inquire, a quiet life, silent scrutiny, poverty, a foreign soil. These, for many, unlock the hidden places of learning.” Page 262 Now the beginning of discipline is humility. Although the lessons of humility are many, the three which follow are of especial importance for the student: first, that he hold no knowledge and no writing in contempt; second, that he blush to learn from no man; and third, that when he has attained learning himself, he not look down upon everyone else. Many are deceived by the desire to appear wise before their time...They all slip the farther from wisdom in proportion as they think, not of being wise, but of being thought so. I have known many of this sort who, although they still lacked the very rudiments of learning, yet deigned to concern themselves only with the highest problems, and they supposed that they themselves were well on the road to greatness simply because they had read the writings or heard the words of great and wise men. Page 262 You glory in having seen, not in having understood, Plato...Good for you! You have drunk at the very fount of philosophy—but would that you thirsted still! Page 262 The wise student, therefore, gladly hears all, reads all, and looks down upon no writing, no person, no teaching. From all indifferently he seeks what he sees he lacks, and he considers not how much he knows, but of how much he is ignorant. For this reason men repeat Plato’s saying: “I would rather learn with modesty what another man says than shamelessly push forward my own ideas.” Why do you blush to be taught, and yet not blush at your ignorance? The latter is a greater shame than the former. Or why should you affect the heights when you are still lying in the depths? Consider, rather, what your powers will at present permit: the man who proceeds stage by stage moves along best. Certain fellows, wishing to make a great leap of progress, sprawl headlong. Do not hurry too much, therefore; in this way you will come more quickly to wisdom. Gladly learn from all what you do not know, for humility can make you a sharer in the special gift which natural endowment has given to every man. You will be wiser than all if you are willing to learn from all. Page 263 Nothing, however, is good if it eliminates a better thing. If you are not able to read everything, read those things which are more useful. Even if you should be able to read them all, however, you should not expend the same labor upon all. Some things are to be read that we may know them, but others that we may at least have heard of them, for sometimes we think that things of which we have not heard are of greater worth than they are, and we estimate more readily a thing whose fruit is known to us. Page 263 If some things, by chance rather obscure, have not allowed him to understand them, let him not at once break out in angry condemnation and think that nothing is good but what he himself can understand. Page 264 Eagerness to inquire relates to practice and in it the student needs encouragement rather than instruction. Page 264 Therefore, seeing that they differed in mind and understanding from all the rest of men, they displayed this fact in the very far-removal of their dwelling places, so that one community might not hold men not associated by the same objectives...Of another man we read that after studying all the disciplines and attaining the very peaks of all the arts he turned to the potter’s trade. Page 264 The old age of those who have formed their youth upon creditable pursuits becomes wiser with the years, acquires greater polish through experience, greater wisdom with the passage of time, and reaps the sweetest fruits of former studies. Page 264 Quiet of life—whether interior, so that the mind is not distracted with illicit desires, or exterior, so that leisure and opportunity are provided for creditable and useful studies—is in both senses important to discipline. Page 265 Eagerness to inquire means insistent application to one’s work; scrutiny means earnestness in considering things. Hard work and love make you carry out a task; concern and alertness make you well-advised. Through hard work you keep matters going; through love you bring them to perfection. Page 265 ## Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads...That sucks. Page 12 Thiel and his cohorts described how Twitter, its 140-character messages, and similar inventions have let the public down. He argued that science fiction, which once celebrated the future, has turned dystopian because people no longer have an optimistic view of technology’s ability to change the world. Pages 13-14 What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He’s the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He’s less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to...well...save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation. Page 17 If there was a way that I could not eat, so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal. Page 48 He talked Musk into renting a large house off campus. They got the ten-bedroom home relatively cheap, since it was a frat house that had gone unrented. Page 52 Musk’s clear, concise writing is the work of a logician, moving from one point to the next with precision. What truly stood out, though, was Musk’s ability to master difficult physics concepts in the midst of actual business plans. Even then, he showed an unusual knack for being able to perceive a path from a scientific advance to a for-profit enterprise. Page 54 For Musk, the distinction between stumbling into something and having intent is important...He wasn’t just sniffing out trends, and he wasn’t consumed by the idea of getting rich. He’s been in pursuit of a master plan all along...“I like to make technologies real that I think are important for the future and useful in some sort of way.” Page 55 You have to put yourself in a position where you say, “Well, how would this sound to them, knowing what they know?” Page 73 Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. “He doesn’t say ‘You have to do this by Friday at 2 P.M.’” Brogan said. “He says, ‘I need the impossible done by Friday at 2 P.M. Can you do it?’ Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You’re working hard for yourself. It’s a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work.” Page 233 We have to have governments, but the idea that the government goes out and competes with companies is fucking nuts. Page 258 Musk, though, approaches everything from a Platonic perspective. As he sees it, all of the design and technology choices should be directed toward the goal of making a car as close to perfect as possible. To the extent that rival automakers haven’t, that’s what Musk is judging. It’s almost a binary experience for him. Either you’re trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or you’re not. And if you’re not, Musk considers you a failure. This position can look unreasonable or foolish to outsiders, but the philosophy works for Musk and constantly pushes him and those around him to their limits. Page 297 To the extent that the world doubts Elon, I think it’s a reflection on the insanity of the world and not on the supposed insanity of Elon.” Page 321 Each facet of Musk’s life might be an attempt to soothe a type of existential depression that seems to gnaw at his every fibre...He’s less sensitive and less tolerant than other people because the stakes are so high. Employees need to help solve the problems to the absolute best of their ability or they need to get out of the way. Page 344 Why would you want to work for a defense contractor when you can work for a guy who wants to go to Mars and he’s going to move heaven and earth to make it happen? Page 353 Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you’re able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work...That’s how we make progress. Page 356 ## The Iliad of Homer No man is going to hurl me to Hades, unless it is fated, but as for fate, I think that no man yet has escaped it once it has taken its first form, neither brave man nor coward. VI. 487-489 It had been built in despite of the immortal gods, and therefore it was not to stand firm for a long time. XII. 8-9 So he spoke and strode on, a god, through the mortal’s struggle. XIII. 239 Their ranks, as they listened to the king, pulled closer together. XVI. 211 Hektor believed in his own struggle and ruined his people. XXII. 107 O fool, for an avenger was left, far greater than he was, behind him and away by the hollow ships. And it was I. XXII. 333-334 ## The Odyssey of Homer You should not go on clinging to your childhood. You are no longer of an age to do that. Page 34 She spoke in prayer, but herself was bringing it all to completion. Page 52 May they grant you a husband and a house and sweet agreement in all things, for nothing is better than this, more steadfast than when two people, a man and his wife, keep a harmonious household; a thing that brings much distress to the people who hate them and pleasure to their well-wishers, and for them the best reputation. Page 107 They wept loud and shrill, letting the big tears fall, but there came no advantage to them for all their sorrowing. Page 157 So learn which of them were fair, which unfair; but even so, she would not deliver any of them from disaster. Page 262 ## Antigone You cannot learn of any man the soul, the mind, and the intent until he shows his practice of the government and law. 175-177 Language, and thought like the wind and the feelings that govern a city, he has taught himself, and shelter against the cold, refuge from rain. He can always help himself. He faces no future helpless. There’s only death that he cannot find an escape from. He has contrived refuges from illnesses once beyond all cure. Clever beyond all dreams the inventive craft that he has which may drive him one time to good or another to evil. 354-366 So do not have one mind, and one alone that only your opinion can be right. Whoever thinks that he alone is wise, his eloquence, his mind, above the rest, come the unfolding, it shows his emptiness. A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must not be too rigid...I’d say it would be best if men were born perfect in wisdom, but that failing this (which often fails) it can be no dishonor to learn from others when they speak good sense. 705-723 So he has made it very clear to men that to reject good counsel is a crime. 1242-1243 ## Oedipus the King It’s a man’s most noble labor to help another when he has the means and power. 314-315 Consider, first, if you think anyone would choose to rule and fear rather than rule and sleep peacefully, if the power were equal in both cases. I, at least, I was not born with such a frantic yearning to be a king—but to do what kings do. And so it is with everyone who has learned wisdom and self-control. As it stands now, I get from you all the prizes—and without fear. But if I were the king myself, I must do much that went against the grain. How should despotic rule seem sweeter to me than painless power and an assured authority? 584-593 I see you sulking in yielding and you’re dangerous when you are out of temper; natures like yours are justly hardest for themselves to bear. 673-675 Troubles hurt the most when they prove self-inflicted. 1231-1232 ## Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the psat and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever. I. 22 When one is deprived of one’s liberty one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the fetters on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it—especially when such a one rejoices in the glorious reputation of having been the liberator of Hellas. I. 69 An Athenian is always an innovator, quick to form a resolution and quick at carrying it out. You, on the other hand, are good at keeping things as they are; you never originate an idea, and your action tends to stop short of its aim. Then again, Athenian daring will outrun its own resources; they will take risks against their better judgement, however sound it may be, and to assume that dangers will last for ever. Think of this, too: while you are hanging back, they never hesitate; while you stay at home, they are always abroad; for they think that the farther they go they more they will get, while you think that any movement may endanger what you have already. If they win a victory, they follow it up at once, and if they suffer a defeat, they scarcely fall back at all. As for their bodies, they regard them as expendable for their city’s sake, as though they were not their own; but each man cultivates his own intelligence, again with a view to doing something notable for his city. If they aim at something and do not get it, they think that they have been deprived of what belonged to them already; whereas, if their enterprise is successful, they regard that success as nothing compared to what they will do next. Suppose they fail in some undertaking; they make good the loss immediately by setting their hopes in some other direction. Of them alone it may be said that they possess a thing almost as soon as they have begun to desire it, so quickly with them does action follow upon decision. And so they go on working away in hardship and danger all the days of their lives, seldom enjoying their possessions because they are always adding to them. Their view of a holiday is to do what needs doing; they prefer hardship and activity to peace and quiet. In a word, they are by nature incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or allowing anyone else to do so. I. 70 When a city can live in peace and quiet, no doubt the old-established ways are best: but when one is constantly being faced by new problems, one also has to be capable of approaching them in an original way. I. 71 Those who really deserve praise are the people who, while human enough to enjoy power, nevertheless pay more attention to justice than they are compelled to do by their situation. I. 76 People, in fact, seem to feel more strongly about their legal wrongs than about the wrongs inflicted on them by violence. In the first case they think they are being outdone by an equal, in the second case that they are being compelled by a superior. I. 77 The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents. I. 78 We are wise because we are not so highly educated as to look down upon our laws and customs, and are too rigorously trained in self-control to be able to disobey them. We are trained to avoid being too clever in matters that are of no use—such as being able to produce excellent theoretical criticism of one’s enemies’ dispositions, and then failing in practice to do quite so well against them. I. 84 There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school. I. 84 Let us not be hurried, and in one short day’s space come to a decision which will so profoundly affect the lives of men and their fortunes, the fates of cities and their national honor. We ought to take time over such a decision. And we, more than others, can afford to take time, because we are strong. I. 85 What we should lament is not the loss of houses or of land, but the loss of men’s lives. Men come first; the rest is the fruit of their labor. And if I thought I could persuade you to do it, I would urge you to go out and lay waste your property with your own hands and show the Peloponnesians that it is not for the sake of this that you are likely to give in to them. I. 143 We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. II. 40 We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all. II. 40 The chief wish of each of you is to be able to make a speech himself, and, if you cannot do that, the next best thing is to compete with those who can make this sort of speech by not looking as though you were at all out of your depth while you listen to the views put forward, by applauding a good point even before it is made, and by being quick at seeing how an argument is going to be developed as you are slow at understanding what in the end it will lead to. III. 38 Let this be a point that constantly recurs in your minds—that you are discussing the fate of your country, that you only have one country, and that its future for good or ill depends on this single decision which you are going to make. V. III Symposium I mean a sense of shame at acting shamefully, and a sense of pride in acting well. Without these, nothing fine or great can be accomplished, in public or in private. Page 463 These are the people who finish out their lives together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another. No one would think it is the intimacy of sex—that mere sex is the reason each lover takes so great and deep a joy in being with the other. It’s obvious that the soul of every lover longs for something else; his soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle it hides behind a riddle. Page 475 “Love” is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete. Page 476 Love promises the greatest hope of all: if we treat the gods with due reverence, he will restore to us our original nature, and by healing us, he will make us blessed and happy. Page 476 Reproduction goes on forever; it is what mortals have in place of immortality. A lover must desire immortality along with the good, if what we agreed earlier was right, that Love wants to possess the good forever. It follows from our argument that Love must desire immortality. Page 490 Mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live forever and be immortal. Page 490 One goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stairs: from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, and from customs to learning beautiful things, and from these lessons he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful. Page 493 What is fitting? Wisdom and the rest of virtue, which all poets beget, as well as all the craftsmen who are said to be creative. But by far the greatest and most beautiful part of wisdom deals with the proper ordering of cities and households, and that is called moderation and justice. Page 491 When he looks at Beauty the only way that Beauty can be seen—only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he’s in touch with no images), but to true virtue (because he is in touch with the true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he. Page 494 ## Republic A good person wouldn’t easily bear old age if he were poor, but a bad one wouldn’t be at peace with himself even if he were wealthy. Page 974 Now, the greatest punishment, if one isn’t willing to rule, is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself. And I think it’s fear of this that makes decent people rule when they do. They approach ruling not as something good or something to be enjoyed, but as something necessary, since it can’t be entrusted to anyone better than—or even as good as—themselves. Page 991 The result, then, is that more plentiful and better quality goods are more easily produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to do any of the others. Page 1009 We must first of all, it seems, supervise the storytellers. We’ll select their stories whenever they are fine or beautiful and reject them when they aren’t...since they will shape their children’s souls. Page 1016 They mustn’t be clever at doing or imitating slavish or shameful actions, lest from enjoying the imitation, they come to enjoy the reality. Or haven’t you noticed that imitations practiced from youth become part of nature and settle into habits of gesture, voice, and thought? Page 1033 They mustn’t become accustomed to making themselves like madmen in either word or deed, for, though they must know about mad and vicious men and women, they must neither do nor imitate anything they do. Page 1033 Are we to allow someone who cannot follow these instructions [artists depicting evil] to work among us, so that our guardians will be brought up on images of evil, as if in a meadow of bad grass, where they crop and graze in many different places every day until, little by little, they unwittingly accumulate a large evil in their souls? Or must we rather seek out craftsmen who are by nature able to pursue what is fine and graceful in their work, so that our young people will live in a healthy place and be benefited on all sides, and so that something of those fine works will strike their eyes and ears like a breeze that brings health from a good place, leading them unwittingly, from childhood on, to resemblance, friendship, and harmony with the beauty of reason? Page 1038 Because anyone who has been properly educated in music and poetry will sense it acutely when something has been omitted from a thing and when it hasn’t been finely crafted or finely made by nature. And since he has the right distastes, he’ll praise fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by them, become fine and good. He’ll rightly object to what is shameful, hating it while he’s still young and unable to grasp the reason, but, having been educated in this way, he will welcome the reason when it comes and recognize it easily because of its kinship with himself. Page 1038-1039 A good soul by its own virtue makes the body as good as possible. Page 1040 You mustn’t expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer appear to be eyes at all, and the same with the other parts. Rather you must look to see whether by dealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole statue beautiful. Page 1053 Wealth and poverty. The former makes for luxury, idleness, and revolution; the latter for slavishness, bad work, and revolution as well. Page 1054 Our children’s games must from the very beginning be more law-abiding, for if their games become lawless, and the children follow suit, isn’t it impossible for them to grow up into good and law-abiding men? But when children play the right games from the beginning and absorb lawfulness from music and poetry, it follows them in everything and fosters their growth, correcting anything in the city that may have gone wrong before—in other words, the very opposite of what happens where the games are lawless. Page 1057 Do you think that someone is a worse painter if, having painted a model of what the finest and most beautiful human being would be like and having rendered every detail of his picture adequately, he could not prove that such a man could come into being? Page 1099 Won’t we also say that the philosopher doesn’t desire one part of wisdom rather than another, but desires the whole thing? And as for the one who’s choosy about what he learns, especially if he’s young and can’t yet give an account of what is useful and what isn’t, we won’t say that he is a lover of learning or a philosopher. But the one who readily and willingly tries all kinds of learning, who turns gladly to learning and is insatiable for it, is rightly called a philosopher, isn’t he? Who are the true philosophers? Those who love the sight of truth. Page 1102 Let’s never include a forgetful soul among those who are sufficiently philosophical for our purposes, but look for one with a good memory...He’s by nature good at remembering, quick to learn, high-minded, graceful, and a friend and relative of truth, justice, courage, and moderation? Those who take up philosophy—not those who merely dabble in it while still young in order to complete their upbringing and then drop it, but those who continue in it for a longer time. Pages 1110-1111 I think that the philosophic nature as we defined it will inevitably grow to possess every virtue if it happens to receive appropriate instruction, but if it is sown, planted, and grown in an inappropriate environment, it will develop in quite the opposite way, unless some god happens to come to its rescue. Page 1114 There isn’t now, hasn’t been in the past, nor ever will be in the future anyone with a character so unusual that he has been educated to virtue in spite of the contrary education he has received from the mob—I mean, a human character; the divine, as the saying goes, is an exception to the rule. You should realize that if anyone is saved and becomes what he ought to be under our present constitutions, he has been saved—you might rightly say—by a divine dispensation. Page 1115 Like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the philosopher—seeing others filled with lawlessness—is satisfied if he can somehow lead his present life free from injustice and impious acts and depart from it with good hope, blameless and content. Page 1118 At present, those who study philosophy do so as young men who have just left childhood behind and have yet to take up household management and money-making. But just when they reach the hardest part—I mean the part that has to do with giving a rational account—they abandon it and are regarded as fully trained in philosophy. In later life, they think they’re doing well if they are willing to be in an invited audience when others are doing philosophy, for they think they should do this only as a sideline. As youths and children, they should put their minds to youthful education and philosophy and take care of their bodies at a time when they are growing into manhood, so as to acquire a helper for philosophy. As they grow older and their souls begin to reach maturity, they should increase their mental exercises. Then, when their strength begins to fail and they have retired from politics and military service, they should graze freely in the pastures of philosophy and do nothing else—I mean the ones who are to live happily and, in death, add a fitting destiny in that other place to the life they have lived. Page 1120 Could anyone claim that, if such offspring are born, they’ll inevitably be corrupted? We agree ourselves that it’s hard for them to be saved from corruption, but could anyone claim that in the whole of time not one of them could be saved? Page 1123 You know that ease of learning, good memory, quick wits, smartness, youthful passion, high-mindedness, and all the other things that go along with these are rarely willing to grow together in a mind that will choose an orderly life that is quiet and completely stable, for the people who possess the former traits are carried by their quick wits wherever chance leads them and have no stability at all. Page 1124 Have you considered how lavish the maker of our senses was in making the power to see and be seen? Page 1128 It isn’t surprising that the ones who get to this point are unwilling to occupy themselves with human affairs and that their souls are always pressing upwards, eager to spend their time above, for, after all, this is surely what we’d expect, if indeed things fit the image I described before. Page 1135 Education isn’t what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes...Education is the craft of turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it. Pages 1135-1136 The virtue of reason seems to belong above all to something more divine, which never loses its power but is either useful and beneficial or useless and harmful, depending on the way it is turned. Or have you never noticed this about people who are said to be vicious but clever, how keen the vision of their little souls is and how sharply it distinguishes the things it is turned towards? This shows that its sight isn’t inferior but rather is forced to serve evil ends, so that the sharper it sees, the more evil it accomplishes. Page 1136 What about the uneducated who have no experience of truth?...The former would fail because they don’t have a single goal at which all their actions, public and private, inevitably aim. Page 1136 Isn’t it one lasting precaution not to let them taste arguments while they’re young? I don’t suppose that it has escaped your notice that, when young people get their first taste of arguments, they misuse it by treating it as a kind of game of contradiction. They imitate those who’ve refuted them by refuting others themselves, and, like puppies, they enjoy dragging and tearing those around them with their arguments. Then, when they’ve refuted many and been refuted by them in turn, they forcefully and quickly fall into disbelieving what they believed before. And, as a result, they themselves and the whole of philosophy are discredited in the eyes of others. But an older person won’t want to take part in such madness. He’ll imitate someone who is willing to engage in discussion in order to look for the truth, rather than someone who plays at contradiction for sport. He’ll be more sensible himself and will bring honor rather than discredit to the philosophical way of life. Page 1154 Having thus emptied and purged these from the soul of the one they’ve possessed and initiated in splendid rites, they proceed to return insolence, anarchy, extravagance, and shamelessness from exile in a blaze of torchlight, wreathing them in garlands and accompanying them with a vast chorus of followers. They praise the returning exiles and give them fine names, calling insolence good breeding, anarchy freedom, extravagance magnificence, and shamelessness courage. Page 1171 Extreme freedom can’t be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city. Page 1174 A real tyrant really is a slave, compelled to engage in the worst kind of fawning, slavery, and pandering to the worst kind of people. He’s so far from satisfying his desires in any way that is clear...he’s in the greatest need of most things and truly poor...he’s full of fear, convulsions, and pains throughout his life. Page 1187 It is better for everyone to be ruled by divine reason, preferably within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without, so that as far as possible all will be alike and friends, governed by the same thing. Page 1198 It’s our aim in ruling our children, we don’t allow them to be free until we establish a constitution in them, just as in a city—by fostering their best part with our own—equip them with a guardian and ruler similar to our own to take our place. Then, and only then, we set them free. Page 1198 ## Nicomachean Ethics Some people were right to describe the good as what everything seeks. 1094a The ends of the ruling sciences are more choiceworthy than all the ends subordinate to them, since the lower ends are also pursued for the sake of the higher. 1094a The things achievable by action have some end that we wish for because of itself, and because of which we wish for the other things, and that we do not choose everything because of something else...this end will be the good, that is to say, the best good. 1094a Now each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper [to that kind of thing]. And so the human good proves to be activity of the soul in accord with virtue, and indeed with the best and most complete virtue, if there are more virtues than one. 1098a Actions in accord with the virtues are pleasant in their own right. 1099a A state [of character] results from [the repetition of] similar activities. That is why we must perform the right activities, since differences in these imply corresponding differences in the states. It is not unimportant, then, to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from our youth. On the contrary, it is very important, indeed all-important. 1103b We need to have had the appropriate upbringing—right from early youth, as Plato says—to make us find enjoyment or pain in the right things; for this is the correct education. 1104b There are three objects of choice—fine, expedient, and pleasant—and three objects of avoidance—their contraries, shameful, harmful, and painful. 1104b For the products of a craft determine by their own qualities whether they have been produced well; and so it suffices that they have the right qualities when they have been produced. But for actions in accord with the virtues to be done temperately or justly it does not suffice that they themselves have the right qualities. Rather, the agent must also be in the right state when he does them. First, he must know [that he is doing virtuous actions]; second, he must decide on them, and decide on them for themselves; and, third, he must also do them from a firm and unchanging state. 1105a The many, however, do not do these actions. They take refuge in arguments, thinking that they are doing philosophy, and that this is the way to become excellent people. 1105b Those who make the best decisions do not seem to be the same as those with the best beliefs; on the contrary, some seem to have better beliefs, but to make the wrong decisions because of vice. 1112a The person who is [now] unjust or intemperate was originally free not to acquire this character, so that he has it willingly, though once he has acquired the character, he is no longer free not to have it [now]. 1114a Indeed, the truer it is that he has every virtue and the happier he is, the more pain he will feel at the prospect of death. For this sort of person, more than anyone, finds it worthwhile to be alive, and knows he is being deprived of the greatest goods, and this is painful. 1117b The best user of riches will be the person who has the virtue concerned with wealth; and this is the generous person...If someone gives to the wrong people, or does not aim at the fine, but gives for some other reason, he will not be called generous, but some other sort of person. Nor will he be called generous if he finds it painful to give, for such a person would choose wealth over fine action, and that is not how the generous person chooses. 1120a For what is generous does not depend on the quantity of what is given, but on the state [of character] of the giver, and the generous state gives in accord with one’s means. Hence, one who gives less than another may still be more generous, if he has less to give. 1120b In this sort of spending the magnificent person will aim at the the fine; for that is a common feature of the virtues...he will think more about the finest and most fitting way to spend than about the cost or about the cheapest way to do it. 1122b Magnanimous people seem to remember the good they do, but not what they receive, since the recipient is inferior to the giver, and the magnanimous person wishes to be superior. And they seem to find pleasure in hearing of the good they do, and none in hearing of what they receive. 1124b The magnanimous person seems to have slow movements, a deep voice, and calm speech. For since he takes few things seriously, he is in no hurry, and since he counts nothing great, he is not strident; and these [attitudes he avoids] are the causes of a shrill voice and hasty movements. 1125a Ruling will reveal the man. 1130a The intemperate person acts on decision when he is led on, since he thinks it is right in every case to pursue the pleasant thing at hand; the incontinent person, however, thinks it is wrong to pursue this pleasant thing, yet still pursues it. 1146b Vicious people seek others to pass their days with, and shun themselves. For when they are by themselves they remember many disagreeable actions, and anticipate others in the future; but they manage to forget these in other people’s company. These people have nothing lovable about them, and so have no friendly feelings for themselves. 1166b As far as we can, we ought to be pro-immortal, and go to all lengths to live a life in accord with our supreme element; for however much this element may lack in bulk, by much more it surpasses everything in power and value. 1177b-1178a ## Aeneid Through pain I’ve learned to comfort suffering men. I. 861-862 This fraud of Sinon, his accomplished lying, won us all over; a tall tale and fake tears had captured us, whom neither Diomedes nor Larisaean Achilles overpowered, nor ten long years, nor all their thousand ships. I. 268-272 The conquered have one safety: hope for none. II. 472 For counting overmuch on a calm world, Palimurus, you must lie naked on some unknown shore. V. 1139-1141 ...how they put off atonements in the world with foolish satisfaction, thieves of time, until too late, until the hour of death. VI. 765-767 Others will cast more tenderly in bronze their breathing figures, I can well believe, and bring more lifelike portraits out of marble; argue more eloquently, use the pointer to trace the paths of heaven accurately and accurately foretell the rising stars. Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth’s peoples—for your arts are to be these: to pacify, to impose the rule of law, to spare the conquered, battle down the proud.” VI. 1145-1154 There are two gates, twin gates of war, as they are called, by long observance looked on in awe, for fear of savage Mars. One hundred brazen bolts keep these gates closed and the unending strength of steel; then too their guardian, Janus, never leaves the portal...Heaven’s queen at this dropped from the sky. She gave a push to stubborn-yielding doors, then burst the iron-bound gates of war apart on turning hinges. VII. 834-839, 852-855 This urge to action, do the gods instill it, or is each man’s desire a god to him...? IX. 252-253 Fortune favors men who dare! X. 392-393 ## Metamorphoses An animal with higher intellect, more noble, able—one to rule the rest: such was the living thing the earth still lacked. Then man was born. Either the Architect of All, the author of the universe, in order to beget a better world, created man from seed divine—or else Prometheus, son of Iapetus, made man by mixing new-made earth with fresh rainwater (for earth had only recently been set apart from heaven, and the earth still kept seeds of the sky—remains of their shared birth); and when he fashioned man, his mold recalled the masters of all things, the gods. And while all other animals are bent, head down, and fix their gaze upon the ground, to man he gave a face that is held high; he had man stand erect, his eyes upon the stars. So was the earth, which until then had been so rough and indistinct, transformed: it wore a thing unknown before—the human form. I, 5-6 Why, o foolish boy, do you persist? Why try to grip an image? He does not exist—the one you love and long for. III, 94 Would you, at the expense of deities you’ve seen, now reverence those gods whom you have only heard about? VI, 184 Desperation can indeed invent; in misery the mind is keen. VI, 200 Meanwhile, whatever Vulcan could destroy, he did. Though Hercule’s immortal part remained, he was unrecognizable; for nothing of his mother’s image now was left; the traces that he kept were Jove’s. Just as a serpent, when it sheds its skin casts off old age and is resplendent in its glittering scales and now, made new again, rejoices; so did the Tyrinthian, when he had put aside his mortal limbs, atain new power in his better part, for he began to seem more large, more tall—majestic, godly, grave and venerable. Now Jove, his father, the all-powerful, rode down to earth and wrapped him in a cloud and, in his four-horse chariot, carried off his son and set him in the sky among the bright stars. Heaven now was heavier on Atlas’ shoulders. IX, 299 The things I sing are mighty things our forebears did not probe, things that have long been hidden. Let us roam among the starry heights; yes, let us rise above the earth—this site so dull, inert; yes, let us rise above the earth—this site so dull, inert; let clouds transport us, let us stand upon the sturdy Atlas’ shoulders; from that height, we shall watch those who stagger far below, who, lacking reason, stray and stumble, those who tremble in the face of what death holds. XV, 518-519 And now my work is done, no wrath of Jove nor fire nor sword nor time, which would erode all things, has power to blot out this poem. Now, when it wils, the fatal day (which has only the body in its grasp) can end my years, however long or short their span. But, with the better part of me, I’ll gain a place that’s higher than the stars: my name, indelible, eternal, will remain. And everywhere that Roman power has sway, in all domains the Latins gain, my lines will be on people’s lips; and throughout all time—if poets’ prophecies are ever right—my name and fame are sure: I shall have life. XV, 549 ## Cicero: On Duties, Laelius: On Friendship If, my son, we firmly adopt moral goodness as our guide—in each and every one of its forms—it will follow automatically what our practical duties or obligations must be. Page 120 Other schools of philosophy maintain that some things are certain, and others uncertain. We adopt a special view of our own. What we say is that some things are probable, and others improbable...Such an approach avoids the presumption of dogmatism, and keeps clear of irrationality, which is the negation of all accurate thinking. Page 123 To gain the goodwill of our fellow human beings, to convert them to a state of active readiness to further our own interests, is a task worthy of the wisdom and excellence of a superman. Page 128 People hate the man they fear; and the man they hate they want to see dead. Page 131 When we are selecting friends to trust, let us at least choose people who are genuinely fond of us and honestly prepared to take our side. Page 135 The truest, loftiest sort of reputation can be obtained by inspiring three feelings in the public: (i) goodwill, (ii) confidence, (iii) respect of the kind which gets one promoted to high office. Page 136 The second method of gaining a reputation, then, is by winning confidence.There are two requirements for this. A man must be considered intelligent; and he must be regarded as just. We feel confidence in people we believe to be wiser than ourselves, and better judges of the future—people who seem capable of dealing with critical situations and making whatever decisions circumstances require. For that is the sort of useful intelligence that people reckon to be the real thing. And as to the second requirement for gaining confidence...justice is the same thing as goodness, and the designation of a just man is bestowed upon the person whose character is untouched by any suspicion of dishonesty or unfair dealing—the sort of man to whom we should consider it safe to entrust our lives, our fortunes and our children. Page 137 Young men also find it easier to gain ready and favourable recognition if they select some wise, famous and patriotic statesman, and attach themselves to him as his companions. Page 144 Eloquent public speaking is an immeasurably greater help towards securing a reputation than any private chatting could be. Page 145 The greatest renown, the profoundest gratitude, is won by speeches defending people. [Especially when] the defendant is evidently the victim of oppression and persecution at the hands of some powerful and formidable personage. Page 147 It is also incumbent on everyone who holds a high governmental office to make absolutely sure that the private property of all citizens is safeguarded, and that the State does not encroach on these rights in any way whatever. Page 161 All politicians who harbour such intentions are aiming a fatal blow at the whole principle of justice; for once rights of property are infringed, this principle is totally undermined. It is, I repeat, the special function of every state and every city to guarantee that each of its citizens shall be allowed the free and unassailed enjoyment of his own property. Page 164 What had originally brought the two of you together was a mutual belief in each other’s goodness. So if, subsequently, you stop being good, it is hard to see how the friendship can continue. Page 197 ## The Four Loves Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. 3% Our imitation of God in this life—that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states—must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions. 5% A faithful and genuinely self-sacrificing passion will speak to us with what seems the voice of God. 112 For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred. 127 Idolatry both of erotic love and of “the domestic affections” was the great error of nineteenth-century literature. 130 The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize. 167-168 Past reason hunted and, no sooner had, Past reason hated. 169 How the Need-pleasures foreshadow our Need-loves is obvious enough. In the latter the beloved is seen in relation to our own needs, just as the scullery tap is seen by the thirsty man or the glass of gin by the alcoholic. And the Need-love, like the Need-pleasure, will not last longer than the need...That is why the world rings with the complaints of mothers whose grown-up children neglect them and of forsaken mistresses whose lovers’ love was pure need—which they have satisfied. Our Need-love for God is in a different position because our need of Him can never end either in this world or in any other. But our awareness of it can, and then the Need-love dies too. 200-205 Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: “We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.” Need-love says of a woman “I cannot live without her”; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection—if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all. 228 If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach. 256 Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one...If nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the “love” of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed. 269-272 Say your prayers in a garden early, ignoring steadfastly the dew, the birds and the flowers, and you will come away overwhelmed by its freshness and job; go there in order to be overwhelmed and, after a certain age, nine times out of ten nothing will happen to you. 295 First, there is love of home, of the place we grew up in or the places, perhaps many, which have been our homes; and of all places fairly near these and fairly like them; love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells...A man’s reasons for not wanting his country to be ruled by foreigners are very like his reasons for not wanting his house to be burned down; because he “could not even begin” to enumerate all the things he would miss...As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness...Those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving “Man” whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children...Patriotism of this kind is not in the least aggressive. It asks only to be let alone. It becomes militant only to protect what it loves. 310-325 Good men needed to be convinced that their country’s cause was just; but it was still their country’s cause, not the cause of justice as such...I may without self righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds—wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine—I become insufferable. The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side—as some neutral Don Quixote might be—for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world...Wars could be heroic without pretending to be Holy Wars. The hero’s death was not confused with the martyr’s. 386-392 If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery...Large areas of “the World” will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. 400-401 As for erotic love, I can imagine nothing more disagreeable than to experience it for more than a very short time without this homespun clothing of affection...There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, yet neither is alone) wraps us round. No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire. 455-458 We may say, and not quite untruly, that we have chosen our friends and the woman we love for their various excellences—for beauty, frankness, goodness of heart, wit, intelligence, or what not. But it had to be the particular kind of wit, the particular kind of beauty, the particular kind of goodness that we like, and we have our personal tastes in these matters. 470 The moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not “my sort of man” he is a very good man “in his own way” is one of liberation...That “in his own way” means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncrasies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate...Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who “happen to be there.” Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed. 476-488 To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it...Few value it because few experience it. And the possibility of going through life without the experience is rooted in the fact which separates Friendship so sharply from the other loves. Friendship is—in a sense not at all derogatory to it—the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. 742-747 Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. 787 Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden)...It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision—it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude. 835 The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer. 840 When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship that arises between them will very easily pass—may pass in the first half-hour—into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. And conversely, erotic love may lead to Friendship between the lovers...You will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the Friendship. 851 The little knots of Friends who turn their backs on the “World” are those who really transform it. 884 For of course we do not want to know our Friend’s affairs at all. Friendship, unlike Eros, is uniquisitive. You become a man’s Friend without knowing or caring whether he is married or single or how he earns his living. What have all these “unconcerning things, matters of fact” to do with the real question, Do you see the same truth? In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: he stands for nothing but himself. 900 Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities. 910 I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. 915 In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it? 924 Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse. 1033 Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. 1208 Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. 1215 Love you? I am you. 1225 It is marriage itself, not the marriage bed, that will be likely to hinder us from waiting uninterruptedly on God. 1242 The table is from time immemorial the place for talk. 1270 In Eros at times we seem to be flying; Venus gives us the sudden twitch that reminds us we are really captive balloons. It is a continual demonstration of the truth that we are composite creatures, rational animals, akin on one side to the angels, on the other to tom-cats. It is a bad thing not to be able to take a joke. Worse, not to take a divine joke; made, I grant you, at our expense, but also (who doubts it?) for our endless benefit. 1299 Forces older and less personal than we work through us. In us all the masculinity and femininity of the world, all that is assailant and responsive, are momentarily focused. The man does play the Sky-Father and the woman the Earth-Mother; he does play Form, and she Matter. But we must give full value to the word play. Of course neither “plays a part” in the sense of bbioleing a hypocrite. But each plays a part or role in—well, in something which is comparable to a mystery-play or ritual (at one extreme) and to a masque or even a charade (at the other). 1330 These lapses will not destroy a marriage between two “decent and sensible” people. The couple whose marriage will certainly be endangered by them, and possibly ruined, are those who have idolized Eros. They thought he had the power and truthfulness of a god. They expected that mere feeling would do for them, and permanently, all that was necessary. When this expectation is disappointed they throw the blame on Eros or, more usually, on their partners. 1479 It is probably impossible to love any human being “too much.” We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallest of our love for God, not the greatest of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy. 1580 The question whether we are loving God or the earthly Beloved “more” is not, so far as concerns our Christian duty, a question about the relative intensity of two feelings. The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield? 1589 To be sovereign of the universe is no great matter to God. In Himself, at home in “the land of the Trinity,” he is Sovereign of a far greater realm. We must keep always before our eyes that vision of Lady Julian’s in which God carried in his hand a little object like a nut, and that nut was “all that is made.” God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. 1623 As Christ is perfect God and perfect Man, the natural loves are called to become perfect Charity and also perfect natural loves. 1739 ## Capitalism and Freedom The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? Page 2 [Government’s] major function must be to protect our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens: to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets. Beyond this major function, government may enable us at times to accomplish jointly what we would find it more difficult or expensive to accomplish severally. Page 2 The second broad principle is that government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what my state does, I can move to another. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations. Page 3 Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action. At any moment in time, by imposing uniform standards in housing, or nutrition, or clothing, government could undoubtedly improve the level of living of many individuals; by imposing uniform standards in schooling, road construction, or sanitation, central government could undoubtedly improve the level of performance in many local areas and perhaps even on the average of all communities. But in the process, government would replace progress by stagnation, it would substitute uniform mediocrity for the variety essential for that experimentation which can bring tomorrow’s laggards above today’s mean. Page 4 The number of citizens who regard compulsory old age insurance as a deprivation of freedom may be few, but the believer in freedom has never counted noses. Page 9 Competitive capitalism...also provides political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other. History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. Page 10 This is a role of inequality of wealth in preserving political freedom that is seldom noted—the role of the patron. In a capitalist society, it is only necessary to convince a few wealthy people to get funds to launch any idea, however strange, and there are many such persons, many independent foci of support. And, indeed, it is not even necessary to persuade people or financial institutions with available funds of the soundness of the ideas to be propagated. It is only necessary to persuade them that the propagation can be financially successful; that the newspaper or magazine or book or other venture will be profitable. Page 17 The number of separate groups that can in fact be represented is narrowly limited, enormously so by comparison with the proportional representation of the market. More important, the fact that the final outcome generally must be a law applicable to all groups, rather than separate legislative enactments for each “party” represented, means that proportional representation in its political version, far from permitting unanimity without conformity, tends toward ineffectiveness and fragmentation. Page 23 The use of political channels, while inevitable, tends to strain the social cohesion essential for a stable society...The widespread use of the market reduces the strain on the social fabric by rendering conformity unnecessary with respect to any activities it encompasses. Pages 23-24 In both games and society also, no set of rules can prevail unless most participants most of the time conform to them without external sanctions; unless that is, there is a broad underlying social consensus...These then are the basic roles of government in a free society: to provide a means whereby we can modify the rules, and to enforce compliance with the rules on the part of those few who would otherwise not play the game. Page 25 The need for government in these respects arises because absolute freedom is impossible. However attractive anarchy may be as a philosophy, it is not feasible in a world of imperfect men. Men’s freedom can conflict, and when they do, one man’s freedom must be limited to preserve another’s—as a Supreme Court Justice once put it, “My freedom to move my fist must be limited by the proximity of your chin.” Pages 25-26 Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange. In practice, monopoly frequently, if not generally, arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals...In a rapidly changing society, however, the conditions making for technical monopoly frequently change and I suspect both public regulation and public monopoly are likely to be less responsive to such changes in conditions, to be less readily capable of elimination, than private monopoly. Page 28 Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. Page 33 The ultimate operative unit in our society is the family, not the individual. Page 33 A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist. Page 34 A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man’s freedom not interfering with other men’s freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary cooperation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas. Page 39 The haste with which spending programs are approved is not matched by an equal haste to repeal them or to eliminate others when the recession is passed and expansion is under way. Page 76 Because its expenditures are now so large a part of the total for the economy as a whole, the federal government cannot avoid having significant effects on the economy. Page 77 The maintenance of the general rules of private property and of capitalism have been a major source of opportunity for Negroes and have permitted them to make greater progress than they otherwise could have made...They have tended to attribute to capitalism the residual restrictions they experience rather than to recognize that the free market has been the major factor enabling these restrictions to be as small as they are...A free market separates economic efficiency from irrelevant characteristics...A businessman or an entrepreneur who expresses preferences in his business activities that are not related to productive efficiency is at a disadvantage compared to other individuals who do not. Page 109 If it is appropriate for the state to say that individuals may not discriminate in employment because of color or race or religion, then it is equally appropriate for the state, provided a majority can be found to vote that way, to say that individuals must discriminate in employment on the basis of color, race or religion. Page 113 One way to state the justification of free speech is that we do not believe that it is desirable that momentary majorities decide what at any moment shall be regarded as appropriate speech...Is it any more desirable that momentary majorities decide what characteristics are relevant to employment than what speech is appropriate? Page 114 There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud...It is the responsibility of the rest of us to establish a framework of law such that an individual in pursuing his own interest is, to quote Adam Smith again, “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention...By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.” Page 133 Individuals choose occupations, investments, and the like partly in accordance with their taste for uncertainty. The girl who tries to become a movie actress rather than a civil servant is deliberately choosing to enter a lottery, so is the individual who invests in penny uranium stocks rather than government bonds. Page 163 No society can be stable unless there is a basic core of value judgements that are unthinkingly accepted by the great bulk of its members. Page 167 The state can legislate a minimum wage rate. It can hardly require employers to hire at that minimum wage all who were formerly employed at wages below the minimum...The effect of the minimum wage is therefore to make unemployment higher than it otherwise would be. Page 180 A thoroughgoing paternalist...cannot be dissuaded by being shown that he is making a mistake in logic. He is our opponent on grounds of principle, not simply a well-meaning but misguided friend. Basically, he believes in dictatorship, benevolent and maybe majoritarian, but dictatorship none the less. Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do prevent him from doing so? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist. Pages 187-188 ## Pensées It is unfair that anyone should be devoted to me, although it can happen with pleasure, and freely. I should mislead those in whom I quickened this feeling, because I am no one’s ultimate end, and cannot satisfy them...I have an obligation to warn those who would be willing to agree to the lie that they ought not to believe it, whatever advantage it may hold for me, because they must devote their lives and their efforts to pleasing God, or searching for him. 15 The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is distraction, yet that is the greatest of our wretchednesses. Because that is what mainly prevents us from thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to damnation. Without it we should be bored, and boredom would force us to search for a firmer way out, but distraction entertains us and leads us imperceptibly to death. 33 Men despise religion, they hate it and are afraid it might be true. To cure that we have to begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason. That it is worthy of veneration and should be given respect. Next it should be made lovable, should make the good wish it were true, then show that it is indeed true. 46 That such an obvious thing as worldly vanity should be so little known that it would be both odd and surprising to say that it is foolish to seek greatness; that is remarkable. 50 The knowledge of outward things will not console me in times of affliction for the lack of moral rules, but knowledge of the laws of morality will always console me for lack of knowledge of the physical sciences. 57 The sweetness of fame is so great that whatever we pin it to, we love, even death. 71 Little things comfort us because little things distress us. 77 It is not good to be too free. 90 Admiration spoils everything from childhood on...The children of Port-Royal who are not given the spur of emulation and reward cease to care. 97 More often than not curiosity is merely vanity. We only want to know something in order to talk about it. Otherwise we would not go on a sea voyage to say nothing about it, but simply for the pleasure of seeing things without ever hoping to describe them. 112 We know the truth not only by means of the reason but also by means of the heart. It is through the heart that we know the first principles, and reason which has no part in this knowledge vainly tries to contest them...Those to whom God has granted faith through the heart are blessed and quite properly convinced of it. But to those to whom it has not been granted we can only give it through reason, until God grants it through the heart. Without that, faith is simply human, and worthless for salvation. 142 Begin by pitying unbelievers. They are unhappy enough in their condition. They must not be abused, except if it helps them. But it harms them. 194 Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness. 225 Two laws are sufficient to govern the whole Christian republic better than all the political laws. 408 What a distance there is between knowing God and loving him. 409 Do not be astonished to see simple people believing without argument: God gives them the love of himself and the hatred of themselves, he inclines their hearts to believe. 412 Custom only has to be followed because it is custom, not because it is reasonable or just. But people follow it for the sole reason that they think it is just. 454 A true friend is a valuable thing, even for the greatest nobleman, so that he can speak well of them and uphold them even in their absence, that they ought to do all they can to acquire one. But they must choose carefully! 502 Our nature consists in movement. Absolute stillness is death. 529 Nothing is easier than to have high office and great possessions, according to the world. Nothing is more difficult than to lead such a life in God’s way without taking interest and pleasure in it. 572 Why do we follow the majority? Is it because they are more right? No, but stronger. Why do we follow ancient laws and ancient opinions? Are they the soundest? No, but they are unique, and remove the roots of disagreement. 589 The adding machine produces effects which are closer to thought than anything done by animals. But it does nothing to justify the assertion that it has a will, like animals. 617 There is pleasure to be on a ship battered by a storm, when we are certain that it will not perish: the persecutions buffeting the Church are of this kind. 617 Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling understand nothing about things which involve reasoning. For to start with they want to get to the heart of things at a glance and are not accustomed to look for principles. The others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, understand nothing about things which involve feelings, since they search for principles and are unable to see at a glance. 622 Greatness of establishment, respect of establishment. 650 There are therefore two sorts of mind: one penetrates quickly and deeply the conclusions of principles, and that is the accurate mind; the other can grasp a large number of principles without mixing them up, and that is the mathematical mind. The first is a powerful and precise mind, the other demonstrates breadth of mind. 669 The heart has its reasons which reason itself does not know. 680 ## Permanent Record Ours was now a country in which the cost of replacing a broken machine with a newer model was typically lower than the cost of having it fixed by an expert, which itself was typically lower than the cost of sourcing the parts and figuring out how to fix it yourself. This fact alone virtually guaranteed technological tyranny, which was perpetuated not by the technology itself but by the ignorance of everyone who used it daily and yet failed to understand it. To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, you’ll work, but when your equipment breaks down you’ll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you. 27 I’m not a natural programmer, and I’ve never considered myself any good at it. But I did, over the next decade or so, become good enough to be dangerous. To this day, I still find the process magical: typing in the commands in all these strange languages that the processor then translates into an experience that’s available not just to me but to everyone. I was fascinated by the thought that one individual programmer could code something universal, something bound by no laws or rules or regulations except those essentially reducible to cause and effect. There was an utterly logical relationship between my input and the output. If my input was flawed, the output was flawed; if my input was flawless, the computer’s output was, too. I’d never before experienced anything so consistent and fair, so unequivocally unbiased. A computer would wait forever to receive my command but would process it the very moment I hit Enter, no questions asked. No teacher had ever been so patient, yet so responsive. Nowhere else— certainly not at school, and not even at home—had I ever felt so in control. 29 ## Reflections on the Revolution in France I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. 7-8 Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesom darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? 8 I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints...Liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. 8-9 Those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers. 9 It cannot however be denied, that to some this strange scene appeared in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in France, but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom; so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety, as to make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the devout effusions of sacred eloquence. 10 Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. 11-12 In the mean time the ears of the congregations would be gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first principle admitted without dispute. 14 It is against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a special case. 17 A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. 21 No government could stand a moment, if it could be blown down with any thing so loose and indefinite as an opinion of 'misconduct.' 27 Their trust for the future preservation of the constitution was not in future revolutions. 27 The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force. It then becomes a case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues against arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold...The question of dethroning...will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of state, and wholly out of the law; a question (like all other questions of state) of dispositions, and of means, and of probably consequences, rather than of positive rights...The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. 30 With or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good...The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. 31 "Your subjects have inherited this freedom," claiming their franchises not on abstract principles "as the rights of men," but as their rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. 32 The idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires. 33 You had all these advantages in your antient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had every thing to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising every thing that belonged to you. 36 You would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and imbitter that real inequality, which it never can remove; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy. 37 That election was so contrived as to send a very large proportion of mere country curates to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state; men who never had seen the state so much as in a picture; men who knew nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy. 46 To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind. The interests of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it. 47 Those who attempt to level, never equalize. 49 There is no qualification for government, but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honor. 50 Woe to that country too, that passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command. Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. 50 Look back at the top half of 51 and understand it before commonplacing. The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possesors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary possession (as most concerned in it) are the natural securities for this transmission. 51 For though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent regulated pre-eminance, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic. 52 It is said, that twenty-four millions to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic...The will of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice. 52 Far am I from denying in theory; full as far is my heart from witholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of men, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. 59 Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. 60 What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics. 61 It is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes. 61 These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance, in such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of politics not adapted to the state of the world in which they live, they often come to think lightly of all public principle; and are ready, on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they find of very trivial value. 63-64 This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot about his nature. 64 All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. 77 There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. 78 Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature. 87 The science of jurisprudence...is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns. 95 Society is indeed a contract...It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society. 96-97 For those purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is as usefully employed as it can be, in fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is the publick ornament, It is the publick consolation. It nourishes the publick hope. The poorest man finds his own importance and dignity in it, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals at every moment makes the man of humble rank and fortune sensible of his inferiority, and degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the priviledges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue, that this portion of the general wealth of his country is employed and sanctified. 98-99 We have not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to shew) to obscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! We will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her mixed throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the classes of society. 103 It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. 104 The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion...To this system of literary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry to blacken and discredit in every way, and by every means, all those who did not hold to their faction. To those who have observed the spirit of their conduct, it has long been clear that nothing was wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into a persecution which would strike at property, liberty, and life. 112 Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the publick mind. 112 --- May no such storm Fall on our times, where ruin must reform. Tell me (my muse) what monstrous, dire offence, What crimes could any Christian king incense To such a rage? Was't luxury, or lust? Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just? Were these their crimes? they were his own much more; But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor. 117 Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of any thing between the despotism of the monarch and the despotism of the multitude? Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great heriditary wealth and heriditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at large acting by a suitable and permanent organ? Is it then impossible that a man may be found who, without criminal ill intention, or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes; and who may repute that nation to be destitute of all wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain a government with ease, or rather to confirm it when actually possessed, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and to subject their country to a thousand evils, in order to avoid it? Is it then a truth so universally acknowledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form into which human society can be thrown, taht a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits, without the suspicion of being a friend to tyranny, that is, of being a foe to mankind? 124-125 In a democracy, the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more depolorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external consolation. They seem deserted by mankind; overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. 125-126 They speak with the most sovereign contempt of the rest of the world. They tell the people, to comfort them in the rags with which they have cloathed them, that they are a nation of philosophers. 134 The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society...It is indeed one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion, and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see any thing destroyed; any void produced in society; any ruin on the face of the land. 139-140 It is not with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment. An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is worse. 140 It is not very just to chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground for punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts, except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy of this enlightened age. 140 I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men, and who would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with infirmites until they fester into crimes. 144 Some miserable bigots will be found here as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different from their own, more than they love the substance of religion; and who are more angry with those who differ from them in their particular plans and systems, than displeased with those who attack the foundation of our common hope. 150 We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence, which arises from contempt, is no true charity. 151 What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence. 190 We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places. Such divisions of our country have been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were so many little images of the great country in which the heart found something which it could fill. 198 They retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There they find that men are equal; and the earth, the kind and equal mother of all, ought not to be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury of any men, who by nature are no better than themselves, and who, if they do not labour for their bread, are worse. They find, that by the laws of nature the occupant and the subduer of the soil is the true proprietor; that their is no prescription against nature; and that the agreements (where any there are) whch have been made with their landlords, during the time of slavery, are only the effect of duresse and force; and that when the people reentered into the rights of men, those agreements were made as void as every thing else which had been settled under the prevalence of the old feudal and aristocratic tyranny...If you ground the title to rents on succession and prescription, they tell you...that things begun ill cannot avail themselves of prescription; that the title of these lords was vicious in its origin; and that force is at least as bad as fraud. 224 To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the part of the subject, and the demands he is to answer on the part of the state, is a fundamental part of the skill of a true politician. The means of acquisition are prior in time and in arrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable and obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their authority. The body of the people must not find the principles of natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them, deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation. He that does this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched. 245-246 What is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty, I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart; they enlarge and liberalise our minds; they animate our courage in a time of conflict. 246-247 To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience; and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a *free government*; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind. 247 When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors who will produce something more splendidly popular. 247 I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to alter yours. I do not know that they ought. You are young; you cannot guide, but must follow the fortune of your country. But hereafter they may be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealth may take. In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, 'through great varieties of untried being,' and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood. 249 ## Pride and Prejudice "Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonimously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." 36 "If she were married to him tomorrow, I should think she had as good a chance of happiness as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before-hand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life." 42 "The indirect boast;--for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing any thing with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance." 90 ## The Federalist Papers It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. Federalist 1 A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. Federalist 1 Nothing is more certain than the indespensible necessity of Government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers. Federalist 2 I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good Citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim in the words of the Poet, "FAREWELL! A LONG FAREWELL TO ALL MY GREATNESS." Federalist 2 We may profit by their experience, without paying the price which it cost them. Federalist 5 The public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and...measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and over-bearing majority. Federalist 10 Stability in Government, is essential to national character, and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society. Federalist 37 Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. Federalist 51 Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. Federalist 51 ## The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self While earlier generations might have seen damage to body or property as the most serious categories of crime, a highly psychologized era will accord increasing importance to words as means of oppression. And this represents a serious challenge to one of the foundations of liberal democracy: freedom of speech. Once harm and oppression are regarded as being primarily psychological categories, freedom of speech then becomes part of the problem, not the solution, because words become potential weapons. ## Poems ### Tell all the Truth but tell it slant Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — ### When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. ### Quick Black Hole Spin-Change I don’t like it— two massive Black Holes each twirling at the core of two merging galaxies get close enough to fuse together then quick as a wink just as they are melting into a New Black Hole Blob they undergo something called a “spin-flip” they change the axes of their spins and the fused-together Black Hole Blob gets its own quick as a cricket’s foot Don’t like it at all And then the new Black Hole Blob sometimes bounces back and forth inside its mergèd Galaxy till it settles at the center but sometimes a “newly” up-sized Black Hole leaves its Galaxy to sail out munchingly on its own into the Universal It I don’t like it Nothing about it in the Bhagavad Gita the Book of Revelation Shakespeare, Sappho, or Allen Ginsberg ## AI We may have realized it's easier to build a brain than to understand one. But we didn't realize it's harder to destroy a brain than to create one. ## Miscellaneous “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to stop and reflect.” Mark Twain “These individuals have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever,’ when really the fever has us. Seneca the Younger “Everything popular is wrong.” Oscar Wilde “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” Seneca the Younger “Perfection is not when there is more to add, but no more to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” William of Occam “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and the need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Herbert Simon “By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day.” Robert Frost “People don’t want to be millionaires—they only want to experience the lifestyle they believe comes with a million dollars.” Timothy Ferriss “If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” Chinese proverb “Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and its fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of judgement.” Paul Fussel “It is fatal to know to much at the outset: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as the novelist who is over certain of his plot.” Paul Thoreau “Man was so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.” Anatole France “If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.” Frank Wilczek “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘if today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something...Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” Steve Jobs “People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” Timothy Ferriss “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams “When I am old and dying, I plan to look back at my life and say, ‘Wow, that was an adventure,’ not, ‘Wow, I sure felt safe.’” Tom Preston-Werner “Set your own definition of success.” Kshitij Kulkami “Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.” Timothy Ferriss “Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.” C.S. Lewis “Choose a wife rather by your ear than by your eye.” Thomas Fuller “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” Saint Augustine “‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you!” Timothy Ferriss “Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?” Timothy Ferriss “Power is not a means; it is an end...The object of power is power.” George Orwell “A lot of us aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens... Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don’t go right now, we’re never going to do it. And we’ll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves greatly.” Tim Cahill “There is nothing to ‘find.’ You create passion by stacking the often improbable things that you love and seeing what you come up with.” Dushka Zapata “Don’t be hungry for success. It’s fleeting. Be hungry to master yourself.” Nicholas Cole “Since the standards of craftsmanship issue from the logic of things rather than the art of persuasion, practiced submission to them perhaps gives the craftsman some psychic ground to stand on against fantastic hopes aroused by demagogues, whether commercial or political. The craftsman’s habitual deference is not toward the New, but toward the distinction between the Right Way and the Wrong Way.” Matthew B. Crawford “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Simon Sinek “The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.” C.S. Lewis “What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent.” C.S. Lewis