Into the very midst of all this welter of evil, at a point in time to all appearance hopeless, at a point in space apparently defenseless, in a nation of which every man, woman, and child was under sentence of death from its sovereign, was born a man who wrought as no other has ever done for a redemption of civilization from the main cause of all that misery; who thought out for Europe the precepts of right reason in international law; who made them heard; who gave a noble change to the course of human affairs; whose thoughts, reasonings, suggestions, and appeals produced an environment in which came an evolution of humanity that still continues.
Andrew Dickson WhiteRelated topics
appearance born came cause change child course death done evil evolution human international law man midst misery nation noble point reason right space thought under welter woman work affairs redemptionRelated quotes
We must account for that inheritance. And we, especially those of us who enjoy the privilege that comes with being the majority, must confront the biases that are inescapable parts of the human condition. We must speak the truth about our shortcomings as law enforcement, and fight to be better. But as a country, we must also speak the truth to ourselves. Law enforcement is not the root cause of problems in our hardest hit neighborhoods. Police officers, people of enormous courage and integrity, in the main, are in those neighborhoods, risking their lives, to protect folks from offenders who are the product of problems that will not be solved by body cameras.
James Comey
As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered.
John N. Gray
The space of time in which a great work can now be accomplished is not marvelous. Brain, muscle, materials, and the means of rapid transport are instantly at command. If one has capital and a well-considered plan, the thing does itself. But that which is wonderful and which I can scarcely believe, although I have been in the midst of it, is the noble, artistic result which has come from the work of American artists who have had only a few months' time to prepare those very designs for the great buildings of the Exposition which have actually been executed with little change from the sketches which were presented in February, 1891.
Daniel Burnham
Should it seem to me that truth has been put to silence, and virtue trampled under foot, and that folly and vice will certainly triumph; should it happen, when all hearts were filled with hope for the human race, that the horizon should suddenly darken around them as it had never done before; should the work, well and happily begun, on which all eyes were fixed with joyous expectation, suddenly and unexpectedly be turned into a deed of shame, - yet will I not be dismayed; nor if the good cause should appear to grow and flourish, the lights of freedom and civilization be diffused, and peace and good-will amongst men be extended, shall yet my efforts be relaxed.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Personally, I feel more irritated by a challenge to an accepted scientific theory than I do by an act of so-called "evil" or "injustice" among mankind; although I never allow my irritation to hamper my acceptance of the new theory as soon as positive evidence warrants it. Thus I have reluctantly exchanged the old nebular for the planetesimal hypothesis, and am beginning to accept the main points of relativity despite a profound intellectual distaste. What is, is-and our emotions regarding the cosmos and its phenomena are of no significance whatever, being wholly subjective matters dependent on individual accidents of neural and glandular physiology and of experience and environment.
H. P. Lovecraft