Remember that virtually all statements boil down to and can be restated
in the following forms.
1. Concepts and definitions. X is in the genus Y and has distinguishing
features A, B, and C.
2. Categorical propositions assert that all, some, or none of X is inside Y.
3. Causal propositions that assert:
a. If X, then Y. (Not very precise about exactly how Y is
contingent upon X.)
b. If and only if X, then Y. (X as a necessary condition for Y.)
c. Whenever X, then Y. (X as a sufficient condition for Y.)
d. The more/less X, the more/less Y. (X and Y vary directly/same
direction or inversely/opposite directions.)
1. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Prospero, in The Tempest, IV: I)
2. ...a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the
monopoly of the legitimate use of physical
force within a given territory. (Max Weber.
"Politics as a vocation." 1918)
3. No living being can be happy or even exist unless his needs are
sufficiently proportioned to his means.
(Emile Durkheim, Suicide. 1897)
4. Every form of social life established amongst men expresses itself
in distances which allay the ceaseless
fear of being seized and caught. (Elias
Canetti. Crowds and power. 1960.)
5. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore.
(Domio of Syracuse, in A Comedy of Errors,
II, II, 113)
6. The venon clamours of a jealous woman
Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.
(Abbess, in A Comedy of Errors, V, I,
70)
7. a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourned longer
(Hamlet, in Hamlet, I: II)
8. foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's
eyes!
(Hamlet, in Hamlet, I: II)
9. There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achieved by others' death
(King John, in King John, IV: II)
10. Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
(Ariel's song, in The Tempest,
I: II)
11. I am convinced, however, that anarchy is not the principal evil
that democratic ages have to fear,
but the least. (Alexis de Tocqueville.
From Democracy in America, Volume II. 1840)
12. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority
claimed by the powers that be.
(Max Weber. "Politics as a vocation."
1918)
13. (T)he more extensive the credo the more unified and strong is
the society." (p. 159)
(Emile Durkheim, Suicide.
1897)
14. (T)he greater concessions a confessional group makes to individual
judgment, the less
it dominates lives, the less
its cohesion and vitality." (p. 159) (Emile Durkheim, Suicide.
1897)
15. (T)he density of a group cannot sink without its vitality diminishing."
(p. 201)
(Emile Durkheim, Suicide.
1897)
16. Until, then, philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes
of this world
have the spirit and power of
philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom
meet in one, and those commoner
natures who follow either to the exclusion
of the other are compelled
to stand aside, cities will never cease from ill--no,
nor the human race, as I believe...
[Plato. The Republic. Book V, 473]
17. ...a confusing of the real and the ideal never goes unpunished. (Goethe. Wisdom and experience.)
18. "...more depressed and anxious pregnant teenagers, who perceive
their social relationships to be
less satisfying, and who have less
knowledge of child development, have more negative expectations
for their infants." (J.M. Contreras
et al. (1995). Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16,
283-295)
19. For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth. [Xenophanes, born 565 B.C.]
20. ...the term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting
directly or indirectly from a positive or negative
act of the victim himself, which
he knows will produce this result. An attempt is an act thus defined
but falling
short of actual death. (Emile
Durkheim, Suicide. 1897)
21. Where the State is the only environment in which men can live
communal lives, they inevitably lose contact,
become detached, and thus society
disintegrates. (Emile Durkheim. The Division of Labor in Society.
1893)
22. There is the authority of the extraordinary and personal gift
of grace (charisma), the absolutely personal
devotion and personal confidence
in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership.
This is
charismatic domination... (Max Weber.
"Politics as a vocation." 1918)
23. It would seem that if despotism were to be established among
the democratic nations of our days, it might
assume a different character; it
would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting
them. (p. 335) (Alexis de Tocqueville.
From Democracy in America, Volume II. 1840)
24. If therefore industrial or financial crises increase suicide,
this is not because they cause poverty, since crises
of prosperity have the same result;
it is because they are crises, that is, disturbances of the collective
order.
(Emile Durkheim, Suicide.
1897)
25. 7
And when he had opened the fourth seal,
I heard the voice of the fourth beast say,
Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse:
and his name that sat on him was Death,
and Hell followed with him.
And power was given unto them
over the fourth part of the earth,
to kill with sword, and with hunger,
and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
[The Revelation of St. John The Divine, 6:7 and 8]
26. On the cessation of karma ceases consciousness;
On the cessation of consciousness
ceases name and form;
On the cessation of name and
form cease the six organs of sense;
On the cessation of the six
organs of sense ceases contact;
On the cessation of contact
ceases sensation;
On the cessation of sensation
ceases desire;
On the cessation of desire
ceases attachment;
On the cessation of attachment
ceases existence;
On the cessation of existence
ceases birth;
On the cessation of birth cease
old age and death, sorrow,
lamentation, misery, grief,
and despair.
Thus does this entire aggregation
of misery cease.
(Samyutta-nikaya--Hinayana
Buddhism)
27. No man shall ever,
by burning
a victim or pouring libations,
nor yet by
weeping, appease the Wrath-Fiends
intent upon
unburned victims...
Among the
wicked of mankind
an old crime
breeds a younger crime,
sooner or
later, when the appointed day
comes for
the new crime to be born--
a Wrath,
a Demon of the house,
unfightable,
unwarrable on, unholy,
a bold, black
Ruin for the household--
truebred
to its ancestral type.
[Aeschylus.
Agamemnon.]
28. Men make their own history, but they do not make it...under circumstances
chosen by themselves,
but under circumstances directly
found, given and transmitted from the past...And just when they seem
engaged in revolutionising themselves
and things, in creating something entirely new, precisely in such
epochs of revolutionary crisis they
anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow
from them names, battle slogans and
costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this
time-honored disguise and borrowed
language. (Karl Marx. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
1851-52)
29. This problem--the experience of the irrationality of the world--has
been the driving force of all religious evolution...
(H)e who lets himself in for
politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical
powers and for
his action it is not
true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that
often the very opposite is
true. Anyone who fails to see
this is, indeed, a political infant... (Max Weber. "Politics as a vocation."
1918)