Two Good Quotes Which Describe The Left

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. — Robert Frost

Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation

"Our greatest fears lie in anticipation"

Honoré de Balzac

The state is merely the modern pretence

“The state is merely the modern pretence, a shield, a make-belief, a concept. In reality, the ancient war-god holds the sacrificial knife, for it is in war that the sheep are sacrificed…So instead of human representatives or a personal divine being, we now have the dark gods of the state…The old gods are coming to life again in a time when they should have been superseded long ago, and nobody can see it.” (Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra)

Whoever fights monsters

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"for is it not the case that we live in an age of emotional incontinence, when they who emote the most are believed to feel the most?"

Theodore Dalrymple

Charles Krauthammer quote

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Charles Krauthammer

Voltaire Quote

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. – Voltaire

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote from "The Gulag Archipelago"

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek justification for his actions.

Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and other’s eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Richard Feynman quote

“ I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and then many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me. ”
                              ~ Richard Feynman; (Born 95 years ago today, May 11, 1918)

Best laid plans of mice and men

The phrase "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry" or simply "best laid plans" is a simple proverb meaning that even carefully planned projects may sometimes still go wrong.

The saying is an adaptation from a 1785 poem by Robert Burns titled "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough." The line as originally written goes "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley." It was also used by John Steinbeck for the title of his 1937 novel "Of Mice and Men."