The Universal Spectator

Our task—ordeal if you will—is that we must make war so godawfully terrible to our enemies, and the rewards of peace and reform so humanely sweet to our friends, that the vast middle in between will have no problem choosing sides.

Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong.

France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are. The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

—Christopher Hitchens, "We Cannot Surrender," The Daily Mirror (UK), July 8, 2005

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

If, however, there is to be a war of nerves let us make sure our nerves are strong and are fortified by the deepest convictions of our hearts.

Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal. I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

(Speech to the British Parliament, May 13, 1940)

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.

Intellectuals by and large disgraced the twentieth century. With rare exceptions, they whored after strange gods, of which the most odious and overwhelming was power. Writers, artists, philosophers, historians, even musicians and architects, enthusiastically committed their talents to the service of one cause or another. This treason of the clerks spread like an epidemic, diminishing the world’s hard-won stock of wisdom and morality, and civilization is still reeling from it.

The Democratic Party perpetually appeals to the uninformed and the uninformable.

[Liberals are] political infants. We're all born liberals—I was born one, too—but at some point you stop becoming dependent on others and you become either inter-dependent or at least independent. I believe at some point you need to not be dependent on government programs and hand outs.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

Out, Out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures,
were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

My humility is legend.

I just played John Cage's 4:33 really fast. It only took 3:58.

Everything improves with age — when you're two.

I spent yesterday listening to serialism and atonality. Today I was introduced to musiqué concrete. Tomorrow I will commit suicide. I need the lift.

Sometimes, I think organized religion is a replacement for ecstasy — a bureaucratic place-holder for an empty soul.

The older I get, the more I love children. They represent everything I wish to become.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration . . . they were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning.
At thirty, I stood firm.
At forty, I had no doubts.
At fifty, I knew the will of Heaven...

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft hours of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate end of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.

The problem with socialism is socialism; the problem with capitalism is capitalists.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; rewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are alone omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

The race is not always won by the fastest runner but sometimes by those who just keep running.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

(The Crisis, No.1, December 23, 1776)

But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.

Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.

—Will Durant

I’d like to have allies, too, but what’s happening in this world right now is we’ve got a competency chasm – we’re getting really good at what we do, and the whole rest of the world is going to hell in a handbasket. As that gap gets wider, they’re going to hate us more, and more, and more. You have to remember, we are simultaneously the most hated, feared, loved and admired nation on this planet. In short, we’re Frank Sinatra – and the chairman didn’t get to be chairman lying down for punks.

—Dennis Miller

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

—John Stuart Mill

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

—Barry Goldwater (Nomination speech at the Republican National Convention, 1964)

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! ... At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

—Abraham Lincoln (The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838)

That the universe, including our consciousness of it, would come into being by some fluke happenstance, that this dark universe of incalculable magnitude has been accidentally self-generated ... is even more absurd than the idea of a Creator.

—E. L. Doctorow, City of God

The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.

—Michael Friedman

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

—Linus Pauling

I believe that the moment is near when, by a procedure of active paranoic thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.

—Salvador Dali

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it.

—Sir Thomas Beecham

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

—Harry S Truman

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.

The older I get, the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

—H. L. Mencken

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

—Alfred Adler

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

—Jean Cocteau

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

The most original, modern authors are not so because they advance what is new, but simply because they know how to put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In a mad world only the mad are sane.

—Akira Kurosawa

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, ‘Is there a meaning to music?’ My answer would be, ‘Yes.’ And ‘Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?’ My answer to that would be, ‘No. ’

—Aaron Copland

Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.

The typical rock fan isn't smart enough to know when he's being dumped on.

—Frank Zappa

Communism is like one big phone company.

—Lenny Bruce

But let us be generous. We will not shoot them. We will not pour salt water into them, nor bury them in bedbugs, nor bridle them up into a ‘swan dive,’ nor keep them on sleepless ‘stand-up’ for a week, nor kick them with jackboots, nor beat them with rubber truncheons, nor squeeze their skulls with iron rings, nor push them into a cell so that they lie atop one another like pieces of baggage — we will not do any of the things they did! But for the sake of our country and our children we have the duty to seek them all out and bring them all to trial! Not to put them on trial so much as their crimes. And to compel each one of them to announce loudly: ‘Yes, I was an executioner and a murderer.’

—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns—or dollars. Take your choice—there is no other—and your time is running out. (Atlas Shrugged)

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

When you consider the global devastation perpetrated by socialism, the sea of blood and the millions of victims, remember that they were sacrificed, not for the ‘good of mankind’ nor for any ‘noble ideal,’ but for the festering vanity of some sacred brute or some pretentious mediocrity who craved a mantle of unearned ‘greatness’— and that the monument to socialism is a pyramid of public factories, public theaters, and public parks, erected on a foundation of human corpses, with the figure of the ruler posturing on top, beating his chest and screaming his plea for ‘prestige’ to the starless void above him.

There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: (1) one-party rule, (2) executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses, (3) the nationalization or expropriation of private property, and (4) censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.

I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.

Do not say that you are afraid to trust your mind because you know so little ... live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.

As long as men are free to speak, a small, rational minority will always prevail over an irrational majority.

—Ayn Rand

Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise, what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

In an age of militant mediocrity, an ‘extremist’ is anyone who takes a position.

There ain’t no answer. There ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.

Towards the government I feel no scruples and would dodge paying the [income] tax if I could. Yet I would give my life for England readily enough, if I thought it necessary. No one is patriotic about taxes.

(Wartime Diary, August 9, 1940)

Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions … Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of schoolchildren ranked above the greatest masterpieces. Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are 20 years old … Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish … The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.

—W. H. Auden, For The Time Being, (“The Massacre of the Innocents,” Part I), 1941-1942

Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

If a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the Income Tax.

Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.

Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!

If you think of reality as the software for the universe, all it would take is for someone to change a comma in the program, and the chair you are sitting on wouldn't be a chair at all.

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of it's existence.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

‘It would seem,’ said Tristram, ‘that we're all cannibals.’ ‘Yes, but, damn it all, we in Aylesbury are at least civilized cannibals. It makes all the difference if you get it out of a tin.’

—Anthony Burgess (The Wanting Seed)

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

—Mark Twain

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

—Benjamin Franklin

Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.

—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

If all other possibilities have been ruled out whatever is left, however unlikely, must be true.

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The greatest happiness of the thinking individual is to explore the knowable and to calmly revere the unknowable.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sorrow is better than laughter, because when the face is sad the heart grows wiser.

—Ecclesiastes 7:3

Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

—Benjamin Franklin

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

—James Clark Maxwell

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know that there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

—Albert Camus

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved — loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

—Victor Hugo

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

—Carl Jung

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.

—Confucius

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

—William James

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

—John Stuart Mill

If you believe everything you read, you better not read.

—Japanese proverb

Patience will achieve more than force.

—Edmund Burke

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

If I had to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

—Thomas Jefferson

Failures are divided into two classes—those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

—John Charles Salak

When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and acts as yours does is something close to a blessed event.

—Robert Pirsig

Madness is rare in individuals; but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it's the rule.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

—Peter DeVries

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

The movies are so rarely great art, that if we can't appreciate great trash, there is little reason to go.

If ye have love of wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind... and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

It is easy to be independent when all behind you agree with you. But the difficulty comes when nine hundred and ninety-nine of your friends think you wrong.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

Nothing from man's hand, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final.

Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law.

Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression.

The natural man has a difficult time getting along in this world. Half the people think he is a scoundrel because he is not a hypocrite.

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.

There is inborn in every artistic disposition an indulgent and treacherous tendency to accept injustice when it produces beauty...

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is doomsday.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

A little integrity is better than any career.

Every artist was first an amateur.

The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

We are a puny and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

In america the geography is sublime, but the men are not: the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

Go put your creed into the deed, nor speak with double tongue.

Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power.

Every man alone is sincere; at the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins.

All actual states are corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Music is another planet.

—Alphonse Daudet

I write music like a sow piddles.

—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

—Ludwig van Beethoven

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

—Mark Twain

After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Science has ‘explained’ nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.

—Aldous Huxley

What is art? Nature concentrated.

—Honore de Balzac

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machines.

—Auguste Renoir, speaking of Leonardo da Vinci

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

—George Bernard Shaw

Painting is silent poetry,and poetry is painting that speaks.

—Simonides

An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.

—Paul Valery

Art is long, and time is fleeting.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The first universal characteristic of all great art is tenderness, as the second is truth.

—John Ruskin

Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.

—Modeste Mussorgsky

No kind of good art exists unless it grows out of ideas of the average man.

—G.K. Chesterton

There are but two boons in life: the love of art and the art of love.

—Anonymous

In even a mediocre artist one sometimes finds a remarkable man.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him nonexistent.

—Oscar Wilde

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

—George Santayana

Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.

—Samuel Coleridge

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

—Pablo Picasso

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

—Al Capp

In art, spontaneity must always be calculated.

—Ned Rorem

The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation.

—Hilton Kramer