All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria.
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
The best contribution one can make to humanity is to improve oneself.
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it ... We should grant power over our affairs only to those who are reluctant to hold it and then only under conditions that increase that reluctance.
The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend to be taken over by people who are corruptible. I don't think that the old saw about 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' is accurate: I think power attracts the corruptible.
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
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.
Most civilisation is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.
The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made.
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that counts.
When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them
Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.
Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.
To stand alone against all adversity is the most sacred moment of existence.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.
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