Posts
When you win, everything you did was an act of genius and when you lose, everything you did was the work of a fool.
Ed Miliband
A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.
Ronald Reagan
We should change the name Conservative Party because we are not.
Margaret Thatcher
The constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him.
Margaret Thatcher
The constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him.
Joseph de Maistre
In a democracy people identify themselves as part of a first person plural—a 'we' established by inheritance and history.
Roger Scruton
We envisage few political evils worse than that of a government that controls us, but which we cannot control.
In a democracy people identify themselves as part of a first person plural—a 'we' established by inheritance and history.
Roger Scruton
We envisage few political evils worse than that of a government that controls us, but which we cannot control.
Roger Scruton
"Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him."
ReplyDeletePaul,
That's a very thought provoking quote.
Presumably pointing to the significance of differences in national culture and the false concept that all men and women hold the same attitudes as others, no matter what their religious, political and social beliefs.
This is a longer excerpt from his Considérations sur la France (1797):
ReplyDelete"I will simply point out the error of principle that has provided the foundation of this constitution and that has led the French astray since the first moment of their revolution.
The constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no knowledge of him.
....This constitution is capable of being applied to all human communities from China to Geneva. But a constitution which is made for all nations is made for none: it is a pure abstraction, a school exercise whose purpose is to exercise the mind in accordance with a hypothetical ideal, and which ought to be addressed to Man, in the imaginary places which he inhabits....
What is a constitution? Is it not the solution to the following problem: to find the laws that are fitting for a particular nation, given its population, its customs, its religion, its geographical situation, its political relations, its wealth, and its good and bad qualities?"