We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.
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Eagles soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
Eagles soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and read more
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.
It is not a fragrant world.
It is not a fragrant world.
The rout is Folly's circle, which she draws
With magic wand. So potent is the spell,
That read more
The rout is Folly's circle, which she draws
With magic wand. So potent is the spell,
That none decoy'd into that fatal ring,
Unless by Heaven's peculiar grace, escape.
There we grow early gray, but never wise.
The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and read more
The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows read more
It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone- that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous...The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human read more
The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims.
