Benjamin Wiker > Quotes

“Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth”
― Benjamin Wiker, The Mystery of the Periodic Table

“Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.”
― Benjamin Wiker

“Niceness, howled Nietzsche, is what is left of goodness when it is drained of greatness.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“Since it all appeared so scientific, and we wanted to hear it, Kinsey’s pseudo-science became foundational for the sexual revolution, used both in courts and classrooms to push a limitless sexual revolution that began in the 1960s and through which we are still living. This revolution will not be over until it has overthrown all sexual boundaries, which means that it will not be complete until it extinguishes all opposition, the greatest of which is Christianity. Once again, we see atheism at the root of rebellion.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“The lesson learned—or that should have been learned—by such epic destruction is this: once we allow ourselves to do evil so that some perceived good may follow, we allow ever greater evils for the sake of ever more questionable goods, until we consent to the greatest evils for the sake of mere trifles.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“Skepticism is a kind of intellectual disease that generally arises among people who are both well fed and well read.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“The cow needs to be milked and there’s no time for udder confusion.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“fashioned in the image of God, that he is to love his wife as himself, and that he should regard his children as precious miracles bearing his and his wife’s image.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“Consider a report from the British newspaper The Observer three years ago: in the Ukraine, suffering so long under the atheist Soviet foot, pregnant women were being paid about $180 for their fetuses, which the abortion clinics turned around and sold for about $9,000. Why? The tissue was being used for beauty treatments. Pregnant women were and still are being paid to kill their babies so aging Russian women can rejuvenate their skin with fetal cosmetics.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“We should reconsider cruelty and open our eyes,” chides Nietzsche. “Almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound: this is my proposition.” Breaking the four-minute mile demanded the superior abilities of Roger Bannister coupled with intense, painful training. Endless hours of excruciating self-denial went into Michelangelo’s adornment of the Sistine Chapel. The glories of the pyramids were made possible by the relentless cruelty of slave labor. Such is the cost of all human greatness. It pays in the coin of pain, and hence greatness itself would be destroyed by maximizing pleasure and comfort and treating pain itself as simply evil.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“Alchemy, however, began in the first century BC, most probably in Egypt. Indeed, scholars believe that the “chem” in alchemy (and hence in chemistry) is from a Coptic word “khem” which means the Black Land, that is, Egypt, for after the Nile River rises and floods the land each year, it looks black. That alchemy probably began in Egypt makes sense. The Egyptians were some of the best metal workers of the ancient world. From”
― Benjamin D. Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“As a matter of fact,” Sanger assures the reader, “Birth Control has been accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the Eugenicists themselves as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.”4”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“You can try the same thing, and use the juice of purple cabbage instead (which you get by boiling several cabbage leaves in 3–4 cups of water for about 15 minutes). We recall that in the experiment at the end of Chapter 4, vinegar was an acid, reacting with baking soda. Baking soda was a base (or alkali, as it is sometimes called). If you put a few drops of purple cabbage juice into some vinegar, and a few drops into a solution of baking soda and water, you will find that the vinegar turns red, and the baking soda solution turns green. Scientists use this test today, and it is called a litmus test. Litmus paper is soaked in a vegetable dye derived from lichens, and then dried. When the paper is dipped in acid, it turns from pink to red, and when dipped in a base, turns blue. (Thus, we normally think of blue as the test color for bases, but as we see from the cabbage juice, different chemicals can cause different test colors.) He”
― Benjamin Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“[A] intensidade da autodestruição da humanidade é uma medida do mito pelo qual ela se orienta.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“But Mr. Davy would not become a doctor, for a copy of Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry fell into his hands. Soon enough, Davy was discharged from Dr. Borlase's service because of his habit of performing explosive experiments.”
― Benjamin Wiker

“Nietzsche, as the apostle of atheism, heralded the darkest century the world has ever known.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“Now one day—and we know the day, August 1, 1774—Priestley put calx of mercury underneath a glass. He focused the sun’s hot rays on the calx with his new 12” diameter magnifying glass. It began to give off a gas. The calx of mercury changed back into mercury, and Priestley trapped the gas with his pneumatic trough. And then he sat and looked, and thought, and looked some more. He happened to have a lighted candle nearby. Without really thinking about it Priestley exposed the candle to the gas. The flame suddenly flared into brilliance! What was this wondrous gas? If”
― Benjamin Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“And so we might find on his shelf some vitriol of Cyprus (copper sulfate), white vitriol (zinc sulfate), aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), arsenic, saltpeter (potassium nitrate), alum of Yemen (aluminium sulphate), burning water (alcohol), brimstone (sulfur) or sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride). We”
― Benjamin D. Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“Lavoisier did not begin as a chemist, however. He first studied to be a lawyer, just like his father. But someone persuaded him to sit in on a very popular chemistry course, and young Lavoisier never thought of being a lawyer again.”
― Benjamin Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“prince should thus take care,” notes Machiavelli, returning to his list of virtues, “that nothing escape his mouth that is not full of the above-mentioned five qualities” so that “he should appear all mercy, all faith, all honesty, all humanity, all religion. And nothing is more necessary to appear to have than this last quality.” It is most important that rulers—and even more so, would-be rulers—appear to be religious. “Everyone sees how you appear,” but “few touch what you are,” and appearing to be religious assures those who see you that, because you appear to believe in God, you can be trusted to have all the other virtues. In politics, some things never change.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“The relationship between the planets and the days Sun-day and Moon-day is obvious. As for the rest, the Saxon god Tiw is the same as the Roman war god Mars, hence we call it Tiw’s-day, instead of Mars-day. The Saxon god Woden is the same as Mercury, and so we call it Woden’s-day instead of Mercury-day. Thursday was named for the god Thor, rather than for Jupiter. And finally Friff (the wife of Woden) took the place of Venus for the Saxons, and so we have Friff-day, or Friday.”
― Benjamin Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“Aristotle had thought that atomism was wrong, and he rejected the views of the ancient Greek atomist Democritus. (The other atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, lived after Aristotle.) But Boyle thought that Aristotle was wrong, and so he rejected the alchemists’ belief (based on Aristotle) that fire, earth, air, and water were the fundamental elements, and Aristotle’s belief that each thing had a definite form. Instead, Boyle believed that everything was made of atoms—including fire, earth, air, and water—and that a thing’s “form” was merely the result of how the atoms were put together. What”
― Benjamin Wiker, Mystery of the Periodic Table

“No good we experience now can possibly outweigh having to suffer eternally in hell. Furthermore, as God is all-powerful, then no seeming necessity or benefit of an evil action in this life can really be necessary or beneficial to anyone from the perspective of eternity. To believe otherwise is only a temptation; in fact, the temptation.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help