Wednesday, September 28, 2011

More Work for Repentance


"…and so there was an end of that short scene of life, which added no great store to me, only to make more work for repentance."
Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders

Reserved for Further Afflictions


"…but I was reserved for further afflictions."
Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders

The Necessity of the Absurd

"We owe civilsation to beliefs which in our modern opinion we no longer regard as true, which are not true in the sense of science (scientific truths), but which nevertheless were a condition for the majority of mankind to submit to moral rules whose functions they did not understand, they could never explain, [and] in which indeed to all rationalist critics very soon appeared to be absurd."

 Friedrich Hayek, "Evolution and Spontaneous Order"
The 33rd Meeting of Nobel Laureates at Lindau, 1983

Monday, September 5, 2011

Grande Latrocinium

"If justice has been abolished, what is empire but a fancy name for larceny [grande latrocinium]?"
Augustine quoted in Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries


Inferre autem bella finitimis et in cetera inde procedere ac populos sibi no molestos sola regni cupiditate conterere et subdere, quid aliud quam grande latrocinium nominandum est? http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/augustine/civ4.shtml

"But to make war on your neighbors, and thence to proceed to others, and through mere lust of dominion to crush and subdue people who do you no harm, what else is this to be called than great robbery?" http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120104.htm