“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

― Benjamin Franklin

“Vous êtes Anglais?” a French journalist asked Samuel Beckett. “Au contraire,” replied the Irishman.

Stacy Schiff in the NYRB.

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

Voltaire

Now we have presidential candidates who make [George W.] Bush look like Abe Lincoln. But who will tell the people?

Paul Krugman, “Fantasies and Fictions at the G.O.P. Debate”, New York Times.

“The compensation of growing old is that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained – at last! – the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, – the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.”

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway.

“I feel much better but fearfully exhausted from examining the extraordinary outpourings of my own students who return my own words to me in grotesque shape, a duly humbling experience, though excellent for one’s self-esteem, but severely shaking to one’s general faith in the rationality of man.”

Isaiah Berlin, writing home after spending a semester in 1949 teaching undergraduates at Harvard.

“The economic management team in Beijing has seriously lost its way. But leaders do funky things when the ruling party’s bargain with its people is ‘we get to rule and you get to get rich.’ Collapsing markets can quickly lead to collapsing legitimacy.”

Tom Friedman, writing in today’s New York Times.

Not sure what he means by “funky”, though. It sometimes is a synonym for “cool”. But it could mean “frightened” — as in “he was in a blue funk”.

“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”

H.L. Mencken