It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil. It behooves the well-intentioned, therefore, vigorously to watch the tendency of even their most highly prized institutions, since that which was established in the interests of the right, may so easily become the agent of the wrong.
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Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating read more
Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart read more
When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer read more
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.
Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction read more
Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to publick opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem the true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong the right.
Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexity" of the real world is in fact the inconsistency in read more
Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexity" of the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds.
I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a read more
I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an read more
We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges.
The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in read more
The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life.
