Albert Bancroft

“In the war I was subject to military law, but subject to law nevertheless; now I am at the mercy of an arbitrary power.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided into "loyalists" and "criminals" a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the "criminals" one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are di­rect, sincere, and true to themselves. From the social point of view these persons would constitute the best guarantee that the future development of the social organism would be toward good. From the Christian point of view they have no other sin on their con­science save their contempt for Caesar, or their in­ correct evaluation of his might.”
― Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind

“The Richmond Enquirer, the South's leading paper, called antislavery senators “a pack of curs” who “have become saucy, and dare to be impudent to gentlemen” and thus “must be lashed into submission…. Let them understand, that for every vile word spoken against the South, they will suffer so many stripes, and they will soon learn to behave themselves like decent dogs—they never can be gentlemen.”
― David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights