#racy

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ↗

— Reinhold Niebuhr

#democracy #inclination #injustice #justice #makes

I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#democracy

No, there are no special places in hell. Hell is a democracy. ↗

— Mike Carey

#lucifer #democracy

There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#conspiracy #freemasonry #illuminati #anarchism

Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#democracy #anarchism

. . . the only legitimate reason that kingship is not attractive to us is because in this age and this world the only kings available are finite and sinful. Listen to C. S. Lewis describe why he believes in democracy: A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. . . . The real reason for democracy is . . . Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.1 If there could be a king who is not limited in his wisdom and power and goodness and love for his subjects, then monarchy would be the best of all governments. If such a ruler could ever rise in the world—with no weakness, no folly, no sin—then no wise and humble person would ever want democracy again. The question is not whether God broke into the universe as a king. He did. The question is: What kind of king is he? What difference would his kingship make for you? ↗

— John Piper

#god #kingship #age

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves! ↗

— Jan Karon

#books #literacy #reading #space

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#angels #civil-war #democracy #destiny #determination

There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#literacy #censorship

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#literacy #reading #mankind