Hall, Rodney. The Second Bridegroom
Order is a way of trapping anything wild, tricking us into the game of thinking we understand. When you come down to it, the need for order is the mark of a coward.
Hamilton, Alexander. The Federalist Papers
.. a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.
For it is an observation, as true as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.
Plunder and devastation ever march in the train of irregulars.
The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number, than when it is to fall singly upon one.
Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which it is controlled or abridged.
It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed, - that is, an extension of the revenue.
... for nothing is more natural to men in office than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.
For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.
... nations pay little regard to rules and maxims calculated in their very nature to run counter to the necessities of society.
We must therefore consider merchants as the natural representatives of all these classes of the community.
The man who understands those principles [of taxation] best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or to sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.
Hawqal, Ibn, Surat-al-Ard. Speaking of Italians in Bernard Lewis, Islam, Vol. II, p. 93.
There is nobody among them, of whatever class, who does not eat onions every day and no house in which it is not eaten morning and evening. This is what has corrupted their imagination, harmed their brains, confused their senses, altered their intelligence, spoiled their complexions, and so disturbed their constitutions that they see things, or at any rate most things, as the opposite of what they really are.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel.
Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Heinlein, Robert A. Time Enough For Love
However, the state may reasonably place a closed season on these exotic asocial animals whenever they are in danger of becoming extinct. An authentic buck pacifist has rarely been seen off Earth, and it is doubtful that any have survived the trouble there .. regrettable, as they had the biggest mouths and the smallest brains of any of the primates.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants 'just a few minutes of your time, please - this won't take long.' Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time - and squawk for more!
So learn to say No - and to be rude about it when necessary.
Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is 'expected' of you.)
Heinlein, Robert A. From The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Hemingway, Ernest.
Never mistake motion for action.
Herbert, Frank. Dune
Without change, something sleeps inside us, and never awakens.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Hess, Karl (speechwriter for Barry Goldwater).
''Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder.
Hesse, Hermann.
If I know what love is, it is because of you.
"Highlander, The Series."
There is no justice - only mercy.
Hoffer, Eric.
In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer
The conservatism of a religion - its orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.
There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves.
It is a dangerous life we live when hunger and cold are at our heels. There is thus a conservatism of the destitute as profound as the conservatism of the privileged.
Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo.
If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.
Thus the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future.
The conservatism of invalids and people past middle age stems, too, from fear of the future.
... a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.
Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.
The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program.
For it always fares ill with the present when a genuine mass movement is on the march.
There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members.
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. ... They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement.
When people toil from sunrise to sunset for a bare living, they nurse no grievances and dream no dreams.
Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable.
Freedom alleviates frustration by making available the palliatives of action, movement, change and protest.
Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility...
Fanatics ... fear liberty more than they fear persecution.
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom.
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where inequality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.
Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually free of frustration.
Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it. They did it by undermining the authority of the parents; by facilitating divorce; by taking over the responsibility for feeding, educating and entertaining the children; and by encouraging illegitimacy.
The Western colonizing powers offer the native the gift of individual freedom and independence. They try to teach him self-reliance. What it all actually amounts to is individual isolation. It means the cutting off of an immature and poorly furnished individual from the corporate whole and releasing him, in the words of Khomiakov, "to the freedom of his own impotence."
The policy of an exploiting colonial power should be to encourage communal cohesion among the natives.
It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.
When people revolt in a totalitarian society, they rise not against the wickedness of the regime but its weakness.
What de Tocqueville says of a tyrannical government is true of all totalitarian orders - their moment of greatest danger is when they begin to reform, that is to say, when they begin to show liberal tendencies.
... we run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves.
... in a minority bent on assimilation, the individual stands alone, pitted against prejudice and discrimination. He is also burdened with the sense of guilt, however vague, of a renegade.
When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored. The consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of boredom.
Fervent patriotism as well as religious and revolutionary enthusiasm often serves as a refuge from a guilty conscience.
What ails the frustrated? It is the consciousness of an irremediably blemished self. Their chief desire is to escape that self...
... when we face a member of a compact group, we are likely to find him contemptuous of death. Both united action and self-sacrifice require self-diminution.
The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings.
The capacity to resist coercion stems partly from the individual's identification with a group.
One realizes now that the ghetto of the Middle Ages was for the Jews more a fortress than a prison.
Dying and killing seem easy when they are part of a ritual, ceremonial, dramatic performance or game. ... It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture.
It is doubtful whether in our contemporary world, with its widespread individual differentiation, any measure of general self-sacrifice can be realized without theatrical hocus-pocus and fireworks.
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience - the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or "of those who are to be."
The prime objective of the ascetic ideal preached by most movements is to breed contempt for the present.
Common suffering by itself, when not joined with hope, does not unite nor does it evoke mutual generosity.
The conservative doubts that the present can be bettered. The liberal sees the present as the legitimate offspring of the past and as constantly growing and developing toward an improved future: to damage the present is to maim the future.
The radical and the reactionary loathe the present. They see it as an aberration and a deformity.
The radical has a passionate faith in the infinite perfectibility of human nature.
The reactionary does not believe that man has unfathomed potentialities for good in him. ... He sees the future as a glorious restoration rather than an unprecedented innovation.
By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation.
Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings. For when we fail in attempting the impossible, we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have "something worth fighting for," they do not feel like fighting.
Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs. And it is perhaps fortunate that some proud natures when suffering defeat in the practical world do not feel crushed but are suddenly fired with the apparently absurd conviction that they are eminently competent to direct the fortunes of the community and the nation.
It is on the contrary the least reasonable thing to give one's life for something palpably worth having. For, surely, one's life is the most real of all things real, and without it there can be no having of things worth having. Self-sacrifice cannot be a manifestation of tangible self-interest.
The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life. He who is free to draw conclusions from his individual experience and observation is not usually hospitable to the idea of martyrdom.
The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.
To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.
What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure."
In order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.
If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable.
... those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others.
The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure.
Thefanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to.
The atheist is a religious person.
And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.
The spokesmen of democracy offer no holy cause to cling to and no corporate whole to lose oneself in.
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
It is doubtful that any gesture of goodwill or any concession from our side will reduce the volume and venom of vilification against us emanating from the [put whatever fanatical movement you want here] Kremlin.
We always look for allies when we hate.
Even in the case of a just grievance, our hatred comes less from a wrong done to us than from the consciousness of our helplessness, inadequacy and cowardice - in other words from self-contempt.
There is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice.
We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves.
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred of him.
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
It seems the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds.
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners.
The undercurrent of admiration in hatred manifests itself in the inclination to imitate those we hate.
Thus, though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.
It seems that when we are oppressed by the knowledge of our worthlessness we do not see ourselves as lower than some and higher than others, but as lower than the lowest of mankind.
Chaos, like the grave, is a haven of equality.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr.
All life is an experiment. Every year if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
Hugo, Victor.
Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
Huxley, Thomas Henry
The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
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