Ioannis Williams

“In the end Sparta's narrowness of spirit betrayed even her strength of soul. She descended to the sanctioning of any means to gain a Spartan aim; at last she stooped so far to conquer as to sell to Persia the liberties that Athens had won for Greece at Marathon. Militarism absorbed her, and made her, once so honored, the hated terror of her neighbors. When she fell, all the nations marveled, but none mourned.”
― Will Durant, Story of Civilization

“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

“Now, he didn't always get away with things: at the time when the whites were busy slaughtering the Indians, there was one Indian tribe who thought, 'what the hell, let's hire lawyers'. So they did. The Cherokees hired the best team of New York lawyers they could find to declare Jackson's behavior unconstitutional in trying to drive them off their lands.--I am, by the way, 1/64th Cherokee; if I get a nosebleed I lose my membership in the tribe, but, in any case, this is a fact about us Cherokees)--we won the legal case, and Jackson said to Marshall, 'ok'--he said--'you've made your decision, now try to enforce it'. Ah, so, he couldn't enforce it, and the army just continued to massacre the Cherokees and drive them out of their lands to Oklahoma.”
― John R. Searle

“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