The Making of History
“History is no captive of some inevitable force. History is made by men and women of vision and courage.” —Ronald Reagan […]
The Gift of the Imagination
Leonard Bernstein “The gift of the imagination is by no means an exclusive property of an artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy. The dullest of dullards among us has the gift of dreams [...]
Threatening Our Values
“Certainly civilization cannot advance without freedom of inquiry. This fact is self-evident. What seems equally self-evident is that in the process of history certain immutable truths have been revealed and discovered and that their value is not subject to the limitations of time and space. The probing, the relentless debunking, has engendered a skepticism that [...]
What is Civilization?
There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are [...]
The Gradual Abolition of Language
“You think, I daresay, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words— scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language right down to the bone. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In [...]
Setting the Bar for Political Rhetoric
“Socrates is setting the bar for political rhetoric very high. He is demanding not only that a politician not pander to the crowd but that he go to the opposite extreme to discipline it. And he judges the politicians of the past not by any worthwhile policies they may have pursued, but solely by whether [...]
The Corruption of Virtue
“Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant. In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse.” […]
Imagination: Changing into the Intimately Strange
“We while away our time in desirous daydreaming and floating reveries; in remembering past scenes, envisioning future sights, and projecting mental images onto present perceptions; in disciplined fictionalizing; and above all in that nocturnal dreaming in which our daily places undergo a sea—change from the indifferently familiar to the intimately strange.” […]
History and the Imagination
“History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand, unless life is breathed into it by the imagination. Then the marble becomes flesh and blood–then it feels, it thinks, it moves, and is immortal.” –Charles Gayarré […]
The Origins of Dialectic
“A debater treats the other speaker as someone who can only be right if he himself is wrong, whom he must defeat at all costs. In a conversation, though, we generally have the decency to accept the things another person says, at least temporarily and tentatively. If we disagree, and take the matter seriously, we [...]
Let Us Make Some Struggles for Our Language
“If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, [...]
The Living’s Endurance of Hardship and War
John Taylor of Caroline “The present generation suffers every hardship and cost of war, although anticipation pretends that it is covered by future generations. And this delusion is used to involve nations in wars, which they would never commence, if they knew that all the expense would fall upon themselves. It is twice [...]
Conservativism and the Regeneration of the Spirit
Russell Kirk “The conservative is concerned, first of all, with the regeneration of the spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at the highest.” – Russell [...]
The Value of Ordered Liberty
Edmund Burke “The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.” – Edmund Burke […]