Quotations

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

Listen, people, Susarion has this to say,
the son of Philinus, from Tripodisce in Megara:
women are a bad thing, but nevertheless, my townsfolk, you cannot have a home without a bad thing. Both to marry and not to marry is a bad thing.
Susarion, early Greek comic poet, of whose work only this survives.

And since that which is in accordance with nature is pleasant, and things which are akin are akin in accordance with nature, all things akin and like are for the most part pleasant to each other, as man to man, horse to horse, youth to youth. This is the origin of the proverbs: The old have charms for the old, the young for the young, Like to like, Beast knows beast, Birds of a feather flock together and all similar sayings.
Aristotle

The truth must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. In periodicals and cyclopædias, in schools and universities; everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feeling that it has a decided majority on its side.
Goethe, in Conversations with Eckermann, a very dull book and a dull remark, but one that is topical.

By externalizing and projecting evil into unjust social structures and prophesying a paradise-like utopia via apocalyptic revolution, Marxism evades the central issue that both religion and great art boldly confront: evil is rooted in the human heart. 

Camille Paglia


There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.
Ludwig Von Mises

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
Søren Kierkegaard

Mgr Alfred Gilbey: 'But you know what I get from all your questions? This awful and mistaken belief that everyone's created equal. We come into a family and the father is the head of the family. Society is hierarchical, not a collection of equals.'

Sir John Mortimer, as he then wasn't: `Isn't it easy for you to say that when you were born at the top of the tree? But if you'd been a child from the back streets of Liverpool, wouldn't you have tried to break down the hierarchical order?'

Mgr Gilbey: `I suppose it's natural to want to better yourself, but it can so easily lead to materialism. We shouldn't worry about our position in society. One of my favourite quotations is from St Peter of Alcantara, when he remarked to a friend who was bewailing the wickedness of the world, "You and I must first be what we ought to be and then we shall have cured what concerns ourselves. Let each one do the same and all will be well."'