Rationality Quotes With Attributions Hidden: from Mein Kampf to Men****x

"To know what question one should, reasonably, ask is already a great and necessary proof of one’s sagacity and insight. For if the question is in itself absurd and demands answers that are unnecessary, then it not only embarrasses the person raising it, but sometimes has the further disadvantage of misleading the incautious listener: it may prompt him to give absurd answers and to provide us with the ridiculous spectacle where (as the ancients said) one person milks the ram while the other holds a sieve underneath."

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Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

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The dreams you see most clearly are most likely to come true.

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"I'm asking how you can compare the value of a great piece of art to that of a human being's life."

"Ohhhhh! You'll want to use what are called 'fractions'."

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To presume that your 1 in 64 million chance is a miracle is to significantly underestimate the total number of things that there are.

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I wanted to be sneaky and fool people into up-voting something they agreed with, but eventually I couldn't resist collecting together these amazing Dark Arts quotes. It's almost unbelievable that this guy, unlike most masters of the Dark Arts, told anybody who cared to read his work exactly what he was doing - and it didn't matter. Just as he probably would have said that it wouldn't matter.

I doubt that a political candidate could run for office in any country with internet if he/she had written things like this. Maybe the press really is doing a better job of being substantive.

Suggestion: Downvote this if you either A) think people should not be exposed to how the Dark Arts work, or B) believe most of these statements are false. Upvote it if you think most of these statements are true.

The broad masses of a nation are not made up of professors and diplomats. Since these masses have only a poor acquaintance with abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, where the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted. They are susceptible only to a manifestation of strength which comes definitely either from the positive or negative side, but they are never susceptible to any half-hearted attitude that wavers between one pole and the other. The emotional grounds of their attitude furnish the reason for their extraordinary stability. It is always more difficult to fight successfully against Faith than against knowledge. Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them to action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude; but a determined will, backed up by force, when necessary.

The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the positive struggle for their own aims but are also determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them. When they see an uncompromising onslaught against an adversary the people have at all times taken this as a proof that right is on the side of the active aggressor; but if the aggressor should go only half-way ... the people will look upon this as a sign that the aggressor is uncertain of the justice of his own cause and his half-way policy may even be an acknowledgment that his cause is unjust.

The future of a movement is determined by the devotion, and even intolerance, with which its members fight for their cause. They must feel convinced that their cause alone is just.

The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary... The more the militant energies of the people are directed towards one objective the more will new recruits join the movement, attracted by the magnetism of its unified action... The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category; for weak and wavering natures among a leader’s following may easily begin to be dubious about the justice of their own cause if they have to face different enemies. As soon as the vacillating masses find themselves facing an opposition that is made up of different groups of enemies their sense of objectivity will be aroused and they will ask how is it that all the others can be in the wrong and they themselves, and their movement, alone in the right.

In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

There is a better chance of seeing a camel pass through the eye of a needle than of seeing a really great man ‘discovered’ through an election.

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Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

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Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

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When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

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Related to atucker's, but I had thought of posting it independently:

This sentiment [that evil is unreal and the universe is perfect], which as much as any other deserves the name of pantheism, is often expressed incoherently and with a false afflatus; but when rationally conceived, as it was by Spinoza, it amounts to this: that good and evil are relations which things bear to the living beings they affect. In itself nothing—much less this whole mixed universe —can be either good or bad; but the universe wears the aspect of a good in so far as it feeds, delights, or otherwise fosters any creature within it. If we define the intellect as the power to see things as they are, it is clear that in so far as the philosopher is a pure intellect the universe will be a pure good to the philosopher; everything in it will give play to his exclusive passion. Wisdom counsels us therefore to become philosophers and to concentrate our lives as much as possible in pure intelligence, that we may be led by it into the ways of peace. Not that the universe will be proved thereby to be intrinsically good (although in the heat of their intellectual egotism philosophers are sometimes betrayed into saying so), but that it will have become in that measure a good to us, and we shall be better able to live happily and freely in it. If intelligibility appears in things, it does so like beauty or use, because the mind of man, in so far as it is adapted to them, finds its just exercise in their society.

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Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature. However, human weakness cannot attain to this order in its own thoughts, but meanwhile man conceives a human character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a character....

This, then, is the end for which I strive, to attain to such a character myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to it with me. In other words, it is part of my happiness to lend a helping hand, that many others may understand even as I do, so that their understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own.

In order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as much of nature as will enable us to attain to the aforesaid character, and also to form a social order such as is most conducive to the attainment of this character by the greatest number with the least difficulty and danger.

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And finally the moment came when I pushed aside what I had done and started to begin again with the announcement that Jupiter himself had never existed; that man was alone in a world in which no voices were heard than his own, a world neither friendly nor unfriendly save he made it so…

How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives.

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"Truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness to the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor."

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Please be careful not to give away people's sources in your replies. rot13 is your friend.

How do you indent quotes?

Men****x

What is that? Google thinks it is X-men...

It really seems like if you’re thinking quantitatively like a good utilitarian consequentialist (note: this is a codeword for “being sane”) then this shouldn’t be a difficult call.

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Please be careful not to give away people's sources in your replies. http://rot13.com/ is your friend.

Please be careful not to give away people's sources in your replies. http://rot13.com/ is your friend.

Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses... The material which one has acquired through reading must not be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little stone to be inserted into a mosaic, so that it finds its proper place among all the other pieces and particles that help to form a general world-picture in the brain of the reader. Otherwise only a confused jumble of chaotic notions will result from all this reading.

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help

An argument is only as good as the job you accomplish with it.

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My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

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Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated. In investigative questions—that is, in questions which are specifically theoretical—what is asked about is determined and conceptualized. Furthermore, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by the asking; this is what is really intended; with this the inquiry reaches its goal.

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The one thing I know, everyone respects the true person. Everyone's not true with themselves.

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