“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
Tag Archives: quotation
Bad luck
Robert A. Heinlein once wrote:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck.’
Robert Heinlein Quote
This Heinlein quote should be repeated often. We hope that it is not a prediction.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Broad-minded intellectuals
I am reading Fall of a Titan by Igor Gouzenko. I’m enjoying it very much even though it depressingly depicts life in the totalitarian Soviet Union. The author has done an excellent job creating moods and describing people. Below is one example I liked.
Rouen, without noticing it, had become infected with a disease very common among so-called broad-minded intellectuals—the disease of subconscious egoism. It expresses itself in a desire to stand apart from society, to contradict. As a rule it turns “broad-minded intellectuals” into narrow Philistines; into the exact opposite of what they imagine themselves to be.