Ioannis Williams

“Most, like Voltaire, expected the monarchs and ruling elites of Europe to reform themselves for the good of humanity. Out of the dictates of logic, out of self-interest, things could not continue as they were. This strikes me as being fundamentally naïve. Ruling elites almost never give up privilege or short-term economic advantage for altruistic reasons or the dictates of logic or long-term interest even when they face catastrophe. Case in point, surely everyone in America understands what a good idea it would be politically, economically, environmentally to develop replenishable sources of fuel, and yet as of this taping, well anyway, so it was in the 18th century. As we have seen, reform from the top was slow in coming. Ancient monarchs were only interested in those reforms that enhanced their powers. Church leaders and nobles generally opposed them outright. In the end, the top of the Great Chain of Being just had too much to lose. But recall that some thinkers, Rousseau in particular, had called for a clean sweep of the Ancien Régime. While revolution is too strong a word to project onto Rousseau, that is what it would take. That step was taken within his lifetime, but not in Europe. In this lecture, we address arguably the most significant and long-lasting result of the Enlightenment, the American Revolution.”
― Robert Bucholz

“In the vast profusion of good things upon this earth I should seek what I like best, and what I can best appropriate to myself.
To this end, the first use I should make of my wealth would be to purchase leisure and freedom, to which I would add health, if it were to be purchased; but health can only be bought by temperance, and as there is no real pleasure without health, I should be temperate from sensual motives.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“Every growing civilization is a scene of multiplying inequalities; the natural differences of human endowment unite with differences of opportunity to produce artificial differences of wealth and power; and where no laws or despots suppress these artificial inequalities they reach at last a bursting point where the poor have nothing to lose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution. ... Then the race for wealth, goods and power begins again, and the pyramid of ability takes form once more; under whatever laws may be enacted the abler man manages somehow to get the richer soil, the better place, the lion’s share; soon he is strong enough to dominate the state and rewrite or interpret the laws; and in time the inequality is as great as before.”
― Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

“We badly needed ornaments for our room, and now we have them ready to our hand. I will have our drawings framed and covered with good glass, so that no one will touch them, and thus seeing them where we put them, each of us has a motive for taking care of his own. I arrange them in order round the room, each drawing repeated some twenty or thirty times, thus showing the author’s progress in each specimen, from the time when the house is merely a rude square, till its front view, its side view, its proportions, its light and shade are all exactly portrayed. These graduations will certainly furnish us with pictures, a source of interest to ourselves and of curiosity to others, which will spur us on to further emulation. The first and roughest drawings I put in very smart gilt frames to show them off; but as the copy becomes more accurate and the drawing really good, I only give it a very plain dark frame; it needs no other ornament than itself, and it would be a pity if the frame distracted the attention which the picture itself deserves. Thus we each aspire to a plain frame, and when we desire to pour scorn on each other’s drawings, we condemn them to a gilded frame. Some day perhaps “the gilt frame” will become a proverb among us, and we shall be surprised to find how many people show what they are really made of by demanding a gilt frame.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau