“June 25. The bells for the ‘Ceasefire’ rang at midnight. I had not realized that I loved my country so much. I am full of pain, anger, and shame. I’ve reached the point where I can’t talk to anyone I suspect of judging this event in a way that differs from mine. At the first word that reveals his spinelessness, his acceptance, I hate him. I feel a kind of physical horror, I move away. That coward, that craven, cannot belong to the same people as I do. At last I can understand all too well how civil wars can be born. I am going to bury myself in silence. I can’t say anything I think out loud. Already we’re settling into servitude. I heard a few of these noble citizens of Auvergne say: ‘Oh, well—they won’t take our mountains.’ Never have eggs, cherries, and strawberries sold so well. Few men really need freedom. I will take refuge in my real country. My country, my France, is a France that cannot be invaded.” (Jean Guehenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 1940–1944)

“We are no longer accustomed to passion in the natural sciences; it has been replaced by ambition. Our young geniuses are passionately ambitious instead of being passionately passionate; and it has become very difficult to distinguish between what is ardent search for the truth and what is a vigorous promotion campaign. What started as an adventure of the highest has become the survival of the slickest or the quickest.” (Erwin Chargaff, Voices in the Labyrinth)

“The journals were full of models no sooner published than discarded. Even then I counseled moderation, thus contributing to my reputation as a ‘controversial figure.’ I said in a Harvey Lecture in 1956: ‘I should advise to wait and see. Models — in contrast to those who sat for Renoir — improve with age.'” (Erwin Chargaff, 1978, Heraclitean Fire)

“Q: Do you mean to imply that we don’t know enough to fight an intelligent war against cancer?”

“A: Well, wars are never intelligent; but you are correct. The present idea seems to be that we shall select some huge forest and we shall declare that cancer is hidden in there somehow. We shall surround this forest with a huge force of hired beaters who will make a terrific racket to rouse and drive the hidden enemy. Whatever little animal comes running out will be given no quarter; it will be killed, and we shall declare that we have killed cancer. Then the chase will be called off. In the meantime, we shall never be sure that we have picked the right forest and that we have killed the right animal. In other words, we propose to attack cancer as if it were North Vietnam, carpet bombing and so on. The brutish totemistic spirit of Dr. Fix-it is particularly unsuited for this sort of operation. ‘Crash programs’ are more likely to crash the programmers than their objects.”

“Q: Do you wish to say that we should sit and do nothing, and this with all the scientific unemployment?”

“A: Not at all. But more than anything else, we ought to beware of think tanks. For think tanks produce tank thoughts, and this is not the kind of thinking that will ‘conquer’ cancer, if conquest is the right word. I have often wondered whether, behind the much advertised fight against cancer, there does not hide the real motive, namely, to abolish death (of course, for the right kind of people). Are we ready for this? Well, I believe we are ready for anything. How about the abolition of death as a so-called national goal? But what a mess we shall be making! If we preserve the old, we shall have to kill the young. In fact, we have made a beginning in this direction.”

“Q: I can’t say that I understand you; but I seem to hear a senile death wish.”

“A: This may be so. But in my life. I have seen too many ill-considered, harebrained schemes end in misery and total chaos to feel optimistic about our medical do-gooders who are ready anytime to apply the techniques for selling snake oil to the most profound, most unfathomable problems of life and death.” (Erwin Chargaff, 1977, Voices in the Labyrinth)

“I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.” (Tocqueville)

…life after life lapses out of
Its essential self and sinks into
One press-applauded pubic untruth
And, massed to its music, all march in step
Led by that liar, the lukewarm Spirit
Of the escalator.
(WH Auden, The Age of Anxiety)

But the new barbarian is no uncouth
Desert-dweller; he does not emerge
From fir forests; factories bred him;
Corporate companies, college towns
Mothered his mind, and many journals
Backed his beliefs.
(WH Auden, The Age of Anxiety)

“What we do, whenever we argue by analogy from case S to case S, is to class these two cases together, though only for a special and limited purpose. We are, or profess to be, sufficiently aware of all the differences that exist between, say, the postal service and the railway service, but we claim that for the one purpose of satisfactory management in the public interest these differences are negligible. When we say that any two things are essentially the same we never mean that they are precisely similar in every respect; but that, though different, their difference is unimportant as compared with their resemblance.” (Alfred Sidgwick, The Application of Logic)

“It seems as if the doctrine that all kinds of monstrous cruelties must be permitted, because without these the ideal state of affairs cannot be attained — all the justifications of broken eggs for the sake of the ultimate omelette, all the brutalities, sacrifices, brain-washing, all those revolutions… all this is for nothing, for the perfect universe is not merely unattainable but inconceivable, and everything done to bring it about is founded on an enormous intellectual fallacy.” (Isaiah Berlin, The Power of Ideas)

What is it that we are waiting for, gathered in the square?
 The barbarians are supposed to arrive today.
Why is there such great idleness inside the Senate house?
Why are the Senators sitting there, not passing any laws?
 Because the barbarians will arrive today.
 Why should the Senators still be making laws?
 The barbarians, when they come, will legislate.
Why is it that our Emperor awoke so early today,
and has taken his position at the greatest of the city’s gates
sitting on his throne, in solemn state, and wearing the crown?
 Because the barbarians will arrive today.
 And the emperor is waiting to receive
 their leader. Indeed he is prepared
 to present him with a parchment scroll. In it
 he’s conferred on him many titles and honorifics.
Why is it that our consuls and our praetors have come out today
wearing their scarlet togas with their rich embroidery,
why have they donned their armlets with all their amethysts,
and rings with their magnificent, glistening emeralds;
why is it that they’re carrying such precious staves today,
maces chased exquisitely with silver and with gold?
 Because the barbarians will arrive today;
 and things like that bedazzle the barbarians.
Why do our worthy orators not come today as usual
to deliver their addresses, each to say his piece?
 Because the barbarians will arrive today;
 and they’re bored by eloquence and public speaking.
Why is it that such uneasiness has seized us all at once,
and such confusion? (How serious the faces have become.)
Why is it that the streets and squares are emptying so quickly,
and everyone’s returning home in such deep contemplation?
 Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
 And some people have arrived from the borderlands,
 and said there are no barbarians any more.
And now what’s to become of us without barbarians.
Those people were a solution of a sort.