…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.

“There are some periods of great conflagration where a whole epoch is lighted up with one great flame of idea, which takes perhaps a few decades to arise, blaze, and fall; during which time it shows all men in its glare. Willy nilly they can be and are seen by this light and by no other. Willy nilly their chief interest for the future lies in their relation to this idea. In spite of themselves they are thrilling, illustrative figures, seen in lurid and logical distortion, — abstracts and epitomes of human life. Nay, they stand forever as creatures that have been caught and held, cracked open, thrown living upon a screen, burned alive perhaps by a searching and terrible bonfire and recorded in the act — as the citizens of Pompeii were recorded by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.”

“It happened that a period of this kind passed over the United States between the years 1830 and 1865. There is nothing to be found in that epoch which does not draw its significance, its interest, its permanent power from the slavery question. There is no man whose life falls within that epoch whose character was not controlled by that question, or whose portrait can be seen by any other light than the light of that fire. Subtract that light and you have darkness; you cannot see the man at all. In the biographies of certain distinguished conservatives of that time you may often observe the softening of the portrait by the omission of unpleasant records, the omission by the biographers of those test judgments and test ordeals with which the times were well supplied. By these omissions the man vanishes from the page of his own book. The page grows suddenly blank. You check yourself and wonder who it was that you were reading about. Now the reason of this disappearance of the leading character from your mind is that the biographer has drawn someone who could not have existed. The man must have answered aye or nay to the question which the times were putting. And, in fact, he did so answer. By this answer he could have been seen. Without it he does not exist.” (John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison)

“The dictator-hero can grind down his citizens till they are all alike, but he cannot melt them into a single man. That is beyond his power. He can order them to merge, he can incite them to mass-antics, but they are obliged to be born separately, and to die separately, and, owing to these unavoidable termini, will always be running off the totalitarian rails. The memory of birth and the expectation of death always lurk within the human being, making him separate from his fellows and consequently capable of intercourse with them. Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.” (EM Forster, What I Believe)

Tocqueville, 1835: “Whatever one does, there are limits to the degree to which the people can be enlightened. Try as one might to make knowledge more accessible, improve teaching methods, and reduce the cost of acquiring learning, there is no way for people to educate themselves and develop their intelligence unless they can devote time to the effort.”

“I confess that I do not feel toward the freedom of the press that complete and instantaneous love that one grants to things that by their very nature are supremely good. I love it out of consideration for the evils that it prevents far more than for the good that it does. If someone were to show me a tenable intermediate position between complete independence of thought and total servitude, I might adopt it, but can such a position be found?” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America)

“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Translated by Arthur Goldhammer)