“Men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.”
“No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution - Revolution is but thought carried into action.Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.”
“Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.”
“The Enlightenment may have made its most lasting impact in the way we live and think today through its social history. Our institutions and laws, our conception of the state, and our political sensitivity all stem from Enlightenment ideas… Remarkably enough, at the center of these ideas stands the age-old concept of natural law. Much if the Enlightenment’s innovation in in political theory may be traced to a change in the interpretation of that concept.”
“Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror”
“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.”