Without denying that Plutarch is often inaccurate and often diffuse; that his anecdotes are sometimes absurd, and his metaphysical speculations not unfrequently ridiculous, he is nevertheless generally admitted to be one of the most
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“After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.”
― Heretics
― Heretics
“The notion that one’s culture is superior to all others solely because it represents the traditions of one’s ancestors, is regarded as chauvinism if claimed by a majority—but as “ethnic” pride if claimed by a minority.”
― The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
― The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
“But, of course, it is not for their language that the tribalists are fighting: they are fighting to protect their level of awareness, their mental passivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders.”
― The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
― The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
“That is no casual thing: a special preference for Mephistopheles. He was especially fond of Mephistopheles’s line from Faust: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”79 This is no surprise; it reflects the very thinking of the man who in letters called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists,”80 who in the Manifesto declared that communism seeks to “abolish the present state of things,” and who at the close of the Manifesto called for “the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”
― The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration
― The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration
“practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation.”
― A Conflict of Visions
― A Conflict of Visions
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