“Assassination, said Disraeli, never changed the history of the world.”
An article in The Economist May 25, 1991 [it added that while it might be true, that of Rajiv Gandhi might prove an exception, which was a remarkable example of present-fixated narrow-mindedness since that of Lincoln and of Julius Caesar arguably did whereas his certainly did not].
“Power is always dangerous. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best.”
Ragnar Lothbrok, quoted in an email from a friend, and it turns out to be from a TV series called Vikings, in 2015 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3623674/characters/nm1379938).
“To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn’t.”
Primo Levi, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail Feb. 25, 2004
“Not to decide is to decide.”
Harvey Cox, quoted in J.W. Marriott Jr. and Kathi Ann Brown, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott’s Way.
“In chapter 13 [of A Preface to Paradise Lost], C.S. Lewis… discussed the tendency, since the time of William Blake and Percy Shelley for critics to regard Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost. Lewis put this idea in its place through an examination of the self-delusion of Satan as one who regarded himself as the injured party, and by reference to Milton's theology. Lewis declared, ‘We know from his prose works that [Milton] believed everything detestable to be, in the long run, also ridiculous; and mere Christianity commits every Christian to believing that “the devil is (in the long run) an ass”.’ Lewis said that we see the same ridiculous trait of the ‘Sense of Injured Merit’ in a variety of familiar situations: the spoiled child, the film star, politicians, and minor poets.”
Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis
“To say [Garry] Geisel is appealing, of course, is to mean it only in the strictly legal sense.”
Linda Williamson in Ottawa Sun Oct. 4, 1999
“all scientific knowledge ‘depends upon the validity of reasoning.’ The reasoning of a person in a psychologically irrational state lacks validity and tends to be open to doubt by others. On this basis, Lewis proposed a rule: ‘No thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes.’”
Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis [describing Lewis’s reasoning in Miracles and quoting it].
“Then he [C.S. Lewis] made a remarkable observation that would appear in several of his apologetics books later. The death of the gods into allegorical figures had not happened because of Christianity, for the dissatisfaction with the old gods had been growing since the time of Socrates. Lewis said that ‘monotheism should not be regarded as the rival of polytheism, but rather as its maturity.’”
Harry Lee Poe The Making of C.S. Lewis [re and quoting from The Allegory of Love].