Land Of The Free (?)

In the wake of the woeful outcome of this past week’s presidential election, a few friends of mine and I got into a sort of “quotation war”, which consisted of an extended E-mail thread of quotes from various intellectual and artistic luminaries from throughout recent times. These quotes consisted of subject mattered that centered around true patriotism and the negative influence that politics and religion can have on society under certain circumstances (not unlike those that face our nation currently.) Here is a small handful that I found particularly poignant.

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.

- Thomas Jefferson

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security

-Benjamin Franklin

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind...And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.

- William Shakespeare

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 religious or political ideas.

-Aldous Huxley

It’s gonna be a rough four years.

-R.k.S.