#pol

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots KNEW! ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#atheists #bigotry #bigots #christianity #ignorance

The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one’s own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#ernst-jünger #liberalism #politics #anarchism

Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. What's so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it's easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else. People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think about them. ↗

— Diane Setterfield

#inoffensiveness #politeness #poor

If one cannot learn from the mistakes of others, one might as well become a Democrat. ↗

— Esther M. Friesner

#irony #politics #supernatural

To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand -- such is the example which nations need and the light which electrifies them. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#politics #revolution #faith

...for a piece of famous fluffiness that doesn't just pretend about what real lives can be like, but moves on into one of the world's least convincing pretences about what people themselves are like, consider the teased and coiffed nylon monument that is 'Imagine': surely the My Little Pony of philosophical statements. John and Yoko all in white, John at the white piano, John drifting through the white rooms of a white mansion, and all the while the sweet drivel flowing. Imagine there's no heaven. Imagine there's no hell. Imagine all the people, living life in - hello? Excuse me? Take religion out of the picture, and everybody spontaneously starts living life in peace? I don't know about you, but in my experience peace is not the default state of human beings, any more than having an apartment the size of Joey and Chandler's is. Peace is not the state of being we return to, like water running downhill, whenever there's nothing external to perturb us. Peace between people is an achievement, a state of affairs we put together effortfully in the face of competing interests, and primate dominance dynamics, and our evolved tendency to cease our sympathies at the boundaries of our tribe. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#imagine #lennon #peace #unapologetic #experience

I once saw a politician walking a dog, and I thought, “How absurd—an animal walking an animal.” Then I thought, “If given the choice, I’d rather vote for the dog.”
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#animal #choice #dog #pet #politicians

What did “good government” really mean? Langlie and his brotherhood promised an end to political corruption. (There’s no evidence that Langlie ever even took a drink, much less a bribe.) The days of “honest graft” were over, at least for a while. But seen from another perspective—that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and Abram’s elite network—Langlie didn’t so much end corruption as legalize it. Langlie wasn’t opposed to a government organized around the interests of the greedy; he just didn’t want to have to break the law to serve them. ↗

— Jeff Sharlet

#bribery #government #legality #political-corruption #united-states

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth. ↗

— Leonard E. Read

#capitalist #economics #inspirational #libertarian #politics

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#inspirational-life #philosophy #family