Some Quotes from Some Dead White Males & One Dead White Woman
by
Stephen Bender
by Stephen Bender
I'll
bet many of those old, white males were sexist, speciesist,
racist, disadvantagedist and homophobic. Oh yeah? Well,
so what? That was then, this is now. Grow up – it
doesn't help to have otherwise smart people focused on how awful
white people or males or rich people are – it's a waste of
everybody’s time and energy. Try this instead – attempt to
relate to everyone by putting yourself – as hard as you
can – in their shoes. If you do, the reward will be rich
– the fact that you did it – the fact that you learned
something.
And
another thing Mr. & Ms. "identity politics" left-lib concerned
citizen type. Are you really so dense as to be incapable
of seeing nuance in this case? Or, are you just mouthing what your
cult stud-elitist professor spit on you? Here's a clue: extraordinary
people who have done awful things to others can also have done amazing
and inspiring things as well – life's like that – there's
no map and no standard.
But,
the herd wants a standard. Ok. So, like the lost Christian y'all
have your closed-minded standards – you dump on Mark Twain,
H. L. Mencken and the "dead white males." Pathetic – and I'm
supposed to be on your side – whatever that
means anymore. Sadly, where I live – San Francisco – this
sort of smallness is, to borrow from Hitch the Pitch, "above reproach
and beneath contempt."
So,
anyway, here are words of wisdom almost as smart as stuff that Lacan
and Jameson and Bloom and Derrida [sic] and Baudrillard and Paglia
and... name as many of these putrid popinjays as you wish. That
is what passes for a mind's nourishment in America – doomed
I tells ya, doomed. Oh well, they could be staring at words
on a page ghostwritten by someone other than Dr. Phil, Bill O'Reilly
or Michael Savage nee Weiner – that would be worse.
Please
read this; don't just look at it.
Please
listen to the echo; don't just hear it.
"Society
in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best
state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable
one."
"When
we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue
is not hereditary."
"O!
ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but
the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun
with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia
and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger
and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive
and prepare in time an asylum for mankind."
~
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) from Common
Sense
Oh how it hurts to see the shoe on the other foot…
"These
are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from service of
their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the
thanks and love of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder
the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too
cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything
its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods;
and it would be strange indeed if so celestial and article as
Freedom should not be highly rated."
"Panics,
in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt.
Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them
and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage
is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy,
and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have
lain forever undiscovered."
"Not
a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation
is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to
do but to trade with them."
"We
fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room
upon the earth for honest men to live in."
"It
is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there
was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in
which America is now engaged."
[Today,
the war is again: at home]
~
Thomas Paine writing in the suggestively entitled The
American Crisis
"War
involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupported
circumstances… that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It
has but one thing certain, and that is to raise taxes."
~
from Thomas Paine’s typically brilliantly entitled Prospects
on the Rubicon
"My
country is the world and my religion is to do good."
"A thing
moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in
temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always
a vice."
~
Paine’s Rights
of Man
"Good-bye
proud world! I am going home
Thou
art not my friend and I’m not thine"
"Give
all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends,
kindred, days,
Estate,
good fame,
Plans,
credit and the Muse,
Nothing
refuse."
~
Two of Emerson’s poems
"Character
is higher than intellect."
"In
self-trust all the virtues are comprehended."
"This
time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what
to do with it."
"I embrace
the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the
low. Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique
and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The
meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street;
the news of the boat."
"If
the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and
there abide, the hug world will come round to him."
~
Emerson writing in The
American Scholar
"A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great
soul simply has nothing to do."
"Imitation
is suicide."
"To
be great is to be misunderstood."
"Whoso
would be a man must be a non-conformist."
"An
institution is the lengthened shadow of one man."
"Discontent
is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will."
"I like
the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching."
"For
every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?"
"Nothing
can bring you peace but yourself."
~
Emerson’s Self
Reliance
"Every
sweet hath its sour; every evil it’s good."
"All
mankind love a lover."
"Thou
art to me a delicious torment."
"A friend
is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him [rather more,
her] I may think aloud."
"A friend
may be reckoned a masterpiece of nature."
"The
only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend
is to be one."
"Heroism
feels and never reasons and therefore is always right."
"Nothing
great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
"Nothing
astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing."
"Nature
and books belong to the eyes that see them."
"The
less government we have, the better – the fewer laws, and the
less confided power."
"Every
man is wanted and no man is wanted much."
"The
reward of a thing well done is to have done it."
~
Selections from Emerson’s Essays
"Men
are what their mothers made them."
"The
world is his, who has money to go over it."
"Art
is a jealous mistress."
"Solitude,
the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend."
~
from Emerson’s Conduct
of Life
"Hitch
your wagon to a star."
"The
true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of
the cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country
turns out."
[The
key reason Amnesiac America is in such trouble.]
"We
boil at different degrees."
"We
do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count."
~
Emerson’s Society
& Solitude
"To
live without duties is obscene."
[Is
there anybody out there?]
"Genius
has not taste for the weaving sand."
"This
world that we live in is but thickened light."
~
from Emerson’s Lectures
& Biographical Sketches
"No
one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
~
Eleanor Roosevelt from This
is My Story (1937)
"The
liberal, emphasizing the civil and property rights of the individual,
insists that the individual must remain so supreme as to make
the state his servant."
~
Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, one of two Senators (Ernest Gruening
of Alaska was the other hero) who opposed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
writing in the once respectable New Republic. (1946)
"You
gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which
you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say
to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next
thing that comes along… You must do the thing you think you cannot
do."
~
Eleanor Roosevelt form You
Learn by Living (1960)
"Some
look at the world and think ‘why?’ Others look at the world and
think ‘why not?’
~
Robert Kennedy, not too long before he was murdered
This
piece is dedicated to the battered wife otherwise known as the Democratic
Party.
April
18, 2005
Stephen
Bender [send him mail] is a writer based in San Francisco. You can
find more of his work at his
website.
Copyright
© 2005 LewRockwell.com
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