Here Ibn Hawqal, about 970, found some 300 mosques, and 300 schoolteachers who were highly regarded by the inhabitants “in spite of the fact,” says the geographer, “that schoolteachers are notorious for their mental deficiency and light brains.
When Zeno, who did not believe in slavery, was beating his slave for some offense, the slave pleaded, in mitigation, that by his master’s philosophy he had been destined from all eternity to commit this fault; to which Zeno replied, with the calm of a sage, that on the same philosophy he, Zeno, had been destined to beat him for it.
The story of the “bondage” in Egypt, of the use of the Jews as slaves in great construction enterprises, their rebellion and escape – or emigration – to Asia, has many internal signs of essential truth, mingled, of course, with supernatural interpolations customary in all the historical writings of the ancient East.
In some way the god had to be appeased and satisfied; for his worshipers had made him in the image and dream of themselves, and he had no great regard for human life, or womanly tears.
And, after speech, it provided a readier instrument for the dissemination of nonsense than the world has ever known until our time.
Self Government by extravagance and incompetence brings its own end.
The politics of the Essays preach a conservatism natural in one who aspired to rule. Bacon wants a strong central power. Monarchy is the best form of government; and usually the efficiency of a state varies with the concentration of power.
When a man is interested in the past he writes history; when he is interested in the future he makes it.
The class war had turned democracy into a contest in legislative looting.
The Roman Republic would soon be destroyed by the unfettered energy of its great men. The redeeming feature of this aristocracy and.
Nothing is lost in history: sooner or later every creative idea finds opportunity and development, and adds its color to the flame of life.
For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, or unchecked fertility. Barbarism is like the jungle; it never admits its defeat; it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost.
To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm: That is the top of sovereignty.
Death is the origin of all religions, and perhaps if there had been no death there would have been no gods.
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery.
Since there was no Heaven in ancient Jewish theology,231 virtue had to be rewarded here or never.
So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it – perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race.
Silence is the beginning of wisdom.
To be a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
He does not admire the merely contemplative life; like Goethe he scorns knowledge that does not lead to action: “men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it is only for Gods and angels to be spectators.