El resultado del sistema gubernativo es, pues, exonerar a los pudientes y querientes de costear la educación de sus propios hijos haciendo que las rentas del Estado le economicen su propio dinero, mientras que el pobre que no educa a sus hijos paga por la educación de los hijos de los acomodados.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, ‘Catedral al norte’, in Educación común, 1869
A vision on his sleep
There came, a dream of hopes that never yet
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire; wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burden; at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled
His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
Her panting bosom:–she drew back awhile,
Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude’, 1816, pp. 149-191
This is servitude,
To serve th’ unwise, or him who hath rebelld
Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,
Thy self not free, but to thy self enthrall’d;
John Milton, Paradise Lost, London, 1667, bk. 6
It would, indeed, not be very wide of the mark to argue that much of what had been achieved by the art of education in the nineteenth century had been frustrated by the art of propaganda in the twentieth.
Harold Laski, A Grammar of Politics, New Haven, 1925, chap. 4, sect. 1
[P]ower is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter—external reality, as you would call it—is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949, pt. 1
Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you, unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did so, and never will, while human nature is made of its present materials.
Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Edinburgh, 1843, vol. 2, p. 132
“Growth” is a funny sort of concept. For example, our GNP increases every time we build a prison. Well, okay, it’s growth in a sense, but it’s kind of a dumb measure. Has our life improved if we have more people in prison?
Noam Chomsky, ‘Interview with Jerry Brown’, in SPIN Magazine, 1993
Ein verheirateter Philosoph gehört in die Komödie.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift, 1887, sect. 7
What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the wole universe?
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, London, 1779, pt. 2
It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe.
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, London, 1986, p. xv
Omnis definitio est periculosa. Certain writers make such a point of repeating the statement, “It is dangerous to define,” that at times one wonders whether defining might not be especially dangerous for their own thinking.
Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory, Detroit, 1962, p. 6
[E]volution does not give us a best of all possible worlds.
Daniel Dennett, ‘Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology’, in The Intentional Stance, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, p. 50
Probability is the guide of life, and of death, too.
Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1993, p. 197
ANGELO I will not do’t.
ISABELLA But can you, if you would?
ANGELO Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2
Preguntadle a un inglés: ¿cuál es la raza humana más perfecta? La sajona, responderá imperturbablemente. Haced la misma pregunta a un francés o a un italiano, y os contestará: la latina. Si interrogáis a un chino, sus compatriotas constituyen la raza más perfecta y el pueblo más avanzado de la tierra; a los europeos llámanlos con desprecio los bárbaros de Occidente. Así, si nosotros preguntáramos: ¿cuál de los diferentes grupos de mamíferos puede considerarse el más perfecto y cuál de ellos tiene derecho a figurar a la cabeza del reino animal? El hombre, nos contestarían unánimes. Nuestro voto formaría una nota discordante en medio del concordante coro.
Quizá si pudiéramos hacer la misma pregunta a un elefante, a un león o a un caballo y ellos pudieran contestarnos, tendríamos una segunda edición de las contestaciones del inglés, el francés, el chino y el italiano; pero como esto no es posible, vamos a reemplazarlos, figurándonos por momentos que somos un proboscídeo que va a examinar el raro bípedo o un león que contempla una media docena de víctimas distintas para hacerse una idea de la presa de más alto precio.
Florentino Ameghino, Filogenia, Buenos Aires, 1884, pp. 115-116
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’, 1794
That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror, who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice. But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied: he or his son may renew his appeal, till he recover his right. But the conquered, or their children, have no court, no arbitrator on earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of their ancestors, which was, to have such a legislative over them, as the majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in. If it be objected, This would cause endless trouble; I answer, no more than justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that troubles his neighbour without a cause, is punished for it by the justice of the court he appeals to: and he that appeals to heaven must be sure he has right on his side; and a right too that is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any part of mankind: from whence it is plain, that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of t he conquered.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, London, 1690, second treatise, sect. 176
Quand tout le monde a tort, tout le monde a raison.
Pierre-Claude Nivelle de la Chaussee, La gouvernante, 1747
Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility–these are the very foundation of any real civilisation, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.
Yehudi Menuhin, ‘Just for Animals’, in Victoria Moran (ed.), Compassion: The Ultimate Ethic, New York, 1985, p. 200
There are two ways for Washington to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling proclamations. One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed–provoking new and greater challenges. That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species–not an idle speculation.
Noam Chomsky, ‘Deep Concerns’, ZNet, March 20, 2003
Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, 1921, 6.43
Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us. […] Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
Edward Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, New York, 1998, pp. 302-303
Como todo poseedor de una biblioteca, Aureliano se sabía culpable de no conocerla hasta el fin.
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Los teólogos’, in El Alpeh, Buenos Aires, 1949
A new religion would be an odd sort of a thing without a name: accordingly, there ough to be one for it—at least for the professors of it. Utilitarianism […] would be the most propre.
Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Edinburgh, 1843, vol. 10, p. 390
La guerre était due à l’ambition de quelques hommes criminels et à l’ignorance des masses, dont le faux patriotisme se laisse encore exalter par des chimères politiques.
Camille Flammarion, Dieu dans la nature, Paris, 1867, Préface de la septième édition
One of the happiest features of possessing a capacious vocabulary is the opportunity to insult your enemies with impunity. While the madding crowd gets mad with exhausted epithets such as “You rotten pig” and “you dirty bum”, you can acerbate, deprecate, derogate, and excoriate your nemesis with a battalion of laser-precise pejoratives. You can brand him or her a grandiloquent popinjay, venal pettifogger, nefarious miscreant, flagitious recidivist, sententious blatherskite, mawkish ditherer, arrant peculator, irascible misanthrope, hubristic narcissist, feckless sycophant, vituperative virago, vapid yahoo, eructative panjandrum, saturnine misanthrope, antediluvian troglodyte, maudlin poetaster, splenetic termagant, pernicious quidnunc, rancorous anchorite, perfidious mountebank, irascible curmudgeon.
Eugene Ehrlich, The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate, New York, 1997, p. xxiii
To deny inconvenient opinions a hearing is one way the few have of controlling the many. But as Richard Nixon used to say, “That would be the easy way.” The slyer way is to bombard the public with misinformation. During more than half a century of corruption by the printed word in the form “news”—propaganda disguised as fact—I have yet to read a story favorable to another society’s social and political arrangements. Swedes have free health care, better schools than ours, child day-care center for working mothers… but the Swedes are all drunks who commit suicide (even blonde blue-eyed people must pay for such decadent amenities). Lesson? No national health care, no education, etc., because-as William Bennett will tell you as soon as a TV red light switches on-social democracy, much less socialism, is just plain morally evil. Far better to achieve the good things in life honestly, by inheriting money or winning a lottery. The American way.
Gore Vidal, ‘A Corrupt System’, in Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (eds.), Money and Politics, Boston, 1999
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of the rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find out that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and the maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as the most free and popular.
David Hume, ‘On the Principles of Government’, in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Edinburgh, 1742