I hate science. It denies a man's responsibility for his own deeds, abolishes the brotherhood that springs from God's fatherhood. It is a hectoring, dictating expertise, which makes the least lovable of the Church Fathers seem liberal by contrast. It is far easier for a Hitler or a Stalin to find a mock-scientific excuse for persecution than it was for Dominic to find a mock-Christian one.
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Was all this bloodshed and deceit - from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro the Puritans - a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made - as it was made by Stalin when he killed pesants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgement be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly?
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High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.
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What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.
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You know, evil comes in many forms, be it a man-eating cow or Joseph Stalin. But you can't let the package hide the pudding. Evil is just plain bad! You don't cotton to it! You gotta smack it on the nose with the rolled up newspaper of goodness! Bad dog! Bad dog!
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There are still some people who think that we have Stalin to thank for all our progress, who quake before Stalin's dirty underdrawers, who stand at attention and salute them.
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I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberators -- they fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be ashamed of?
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
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If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a peace conference, you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.
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People imagine that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin arrived in Yalta with a blank sheet of paper to decide the fate of Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth,
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Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.
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To say I accept in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration-camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murder.
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In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than to advance.
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Die, but do not retreat.
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The writer is the engineer of the human soul.
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History shows that there are no invincible armies.
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The only real power comes out of a long rifle.
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Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.
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The people who cast the votes do not decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
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I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will.
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Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
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The Pope! How many divisions has _he_ got ?
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Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas? by
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The people who cast the votes donÆt decide an election, the people who count the votes do
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Gratitude is a sickness, suffered by dogs.
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The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count them decide everything.
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A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
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A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic
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A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
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Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron.
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