Roberto Acioly

“We keep the memory of past or recent victims only if their language has immortalized the blood which has spattered them. The executioners themselves survive only insofar as they were performers: Nero would be long since forgotten without his outbursts of bloody clowning.”
― Emil M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“The flood of popular scientific books in America is inspired partly, though of course not wholly, by the unwillingness to admit that there is anything in science that only experts can understand. The idea that special training may be necessary to understand, say, the theory of relativity, causes a sort of irritation, although nobody is irritated by the fact that special training is necessary in order to be a first-rate football player.”
― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

“Everyone trying to remedy everyone’s life: even beggars, even the incurable aspire to it: the sidewalks and hospitals of the world overflow with reformers. The longing to become a source of events affects each man like a mental disorder or a desired malediction. Society—an inferno of saviors! What Diogenes was looking for with his lantern was an indifferent man.”
― Emil M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“On the contrary, every appeal to unconstitutional violence helps in the growth of Fascism. Whatever may be the weaknesses of democracy, it is only by means of it and by the help of the popular belief in it that Socialism can hope to succeed in Great Britain or America. Whoever weakens the respect for democratic government is, intentionally or unintentionally, increasing the likelihood, not of Socialism or Communism, but of Fascism.”
― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays