Non-fiction authors from France

"On n'enseigne pas l'intellectualisme en une école."

"One single private soldier, and we would take good care that he was killed."

"Les avions sont des jouets intéressants mais n'ont aucune utilité militaire"

"One does simply what one can in order to apply what one knows."

"Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque."

"What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all of the armies of Europe."

"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire."

"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years."

"In tactics, action is the governing rule of war."

"To inform, and, therefore to reconnoitre, this is the first and constant duty of the advanced guard."

"The laurels of victory are at the point of the enemy bayonets. They must be plucked there; they must be carried by a hand-to-hand fight if one really means to conquer."

"Against what should fire be opened? Against the obstacles which may delay the march of infantry. The first obstacle is the enemy gun. It will be the first objective assigned to artillery masses."

"There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself."

"An army is to a chief what a sword is to a soldier. It is only worth anything in so far as it receives from him a certain impulsion (direction and vigour)."

"When the moment arrives for taking decisions, facing responsibilities, entering upon sacrifices — decisions which ought to be taken before they are imposed, responsibilities which ought to be welcomed, for the initiative must be secured and the offensive launched — where should we find a man equal to these uncertain and dangerous tasks were it not among men of a superior stamp, men eager for responsibilities? He must indeed be a man who, being deeply imbued with a will to conquer, shall derive from that will (as well as from a clear perception of the only means that lead to victory) the strength to make an unwavering use of the most formidable rights, to approach with courage all difficulties and all sacrifices, to risk everything; even honour — for a beaten general is disgraced for ever."

"The distribution of troops devoted to the defence of a place includes a garrison, an occupying force, numerically as weak as possible; a reserve as strong as possible, designed for counterattacking and for providing itself, at the moment it goes into action, with a security service which will guard it from any possible surprise."

"To be disciplined does not mean being silent, abstaining, or doing only what one thinks one may undertake without risk; it is not the art of eluding responsibility; it means acting in compliance with orders received, and therefore finding in one's own mind, by effort and reflection, the possibility to carry out such orders. It also means finding in one's own will the energy to face the risks involved in execution."

"In a time such as ours when people believe they can do without an ideal, cast away what they call abstract ideas, live on realism, rationalism, positivism, reduce everything to knowledge or to the use of more or less ingenious and casual devices — let us acknowledge it here — in such a time there is only one means of avoiding error, crime, disaster, of determining the conduct to be followed on a given occasion — but a safe means it is, and a fruitful one; this is the exclusive devotion to two abstract notions in the field of ethics: duty and discipline; such a devotion, if it is to lead to happy results, further implies besides… knowledge and reasoning."

"In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself. In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final. Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping."

"This absence of similarity among military questions naturally brings out the inability of memory to solve them; also the sterility of invariable forms, such as figures, geometrical drawings (épures), plans (schémas), etc. One only right solution imposes itself : namely, the application, varying according to circumstances, of fixed principles."

"The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well."

"Every manoeuvre must be the development of a scheme; it must aim at a goal."

"Men called to the conduct of troops should prepare themselves to deal with cases more and more varied upon an ever-increasing horizon of experience. They can only be given the capacity to arrive at a prompt and judicious position by developing in them through study their power of analysis and of synthesis; that is, of conclusion in a purely objective sense, conclusion upon problems which have been actually lived and taken from real history. Thus also can they be founded through the conviction that comes from knowledge in a confidence sufficient to enable them to take such decisions upon the field of action."

"The unknown is the governing condition of war."

"Far from being a sum of distinct and partial results, victory is the consequence of efforts, some of which are victorious while others appear to be fruitless, which nevertheless all aim at a common goal, all drive at a common result: namely, at a decision, a conclusion which alone can provide victory."

"A war not only arises, but derives its nature, from the political ideas, the moral sentiments, and the international relations obtaining at the moment when it breaks out. This amounts to saying : try and know why and with the help of what you are going to act; then you will find out how to act."

"The military art is not an accomplishment, an art for dilettante, a sport. You do not make war without reason, without an object, as you would give yourself up to music, painting, hunting, lawn tennis, where there is no great harm done whether you stop altogether or go on, whether you do little or much. Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating. When you are at war you have no power to act at random. Each operation has a raison d'etre, that is an object; that object, once determined, fixes the nature and the value of the means to be resorted to as well as the use which ought to be made of the forces."

"In my opinion the treaty [of Versailles] was a bad one, very bad for us. It assured to us neither of the two things to which we were entitled: reparations and security. I said so to anyone who was willing to listen and to many who were not."

"If France has a firm hold of the Rhine, she may be at rest, for she can be sure of reparations and security; without the Rhine she has neither. All that may be offered or given in exchange is valueless, illusory, empty. That is the position I took up immediately. We must have the Rhine line; we want nothing more and will take nothing less."

"The Prussian Army has no ideals, no true spiritual strength; neither has the whole nation. All they have is gross materialism. ... The German soul has a place for the glorification of brute force, for the notion of war as a colossal looting campaign. That is all it holds. It is not much."

"What you must do is to avoid the outbreak of war; do not tempt nations to become your adversaries. The best, indeed, the only means to this end are solid frontiers and an excellent army."

"In dealing with Germany, you should never lose sight of the abominable manner in which she declared and waged the late War. Her conduct during the War was not accidental and unpremeditated. She followed a long-concerted plan. For many years her professors, philosophers and so-called thinkers, inculcated the theory that she was superior to all other countries, and therefore, had the right to do with them whatever she would. The rules of morality, apparently, did not apply to Germany."

"All her principles are based on one idea, namely: That right and morality are not the same for all, that there are privileged individuals who may deliver themselves from their shackles. It is a wicked theory; it cannot be too strongly opposed. From head to heel, Germany was tainted with this spirit. It assumed the importance of a dogma. ... The worst means were sanctified by her if used to this end."

"There you have a country against which the Allies must take well-defined precautions. It is possible that its republican form of government will profoundly modify the German mentality. I devoutly hope so, but we cannot be sure. A well-organized, militarized Republic, however, might be as great a menace to its neighbours as the old Empire—although as yet we have no proof that the Republic can establish itself firmly in Germany."

"At the end of a war that cost them so much in men and money, I believed, and I still believe, that France and Belgium needed strongly-established frontiers to protect them for all time from any possible aggression on the part of Germany. Germany, by reason of her ever-increasing population and the militarist spirit that will always manifest itself—whether she be a republican or a monarchist Germany—constitutes a menace all the greater because there is no Russia to counterbalance her. The only natural barrier between us is the Rhine. Whoever holds its bridges is master of the situation; he can easily repulse an invasion, and, if attacked, carry the war into the enemy's territory. Any other frontier is bad for us, and can give us illusory safety, but not genuine security."

"I proposed a solid basis for the new, post-war Europe: Germany permanently bounded on the west by the Rhine, and the Rhine held by a small Allied force; the creation of an independent Rhineland State separating France from Germany, similar to England's creation of Belgium. ... What had we in place of that plan? A scheme for a hypothetical and conditional alliance by which, at best, we could receive no immediate military protection; and a temporary occupation, the main drawback of which was its indecisiveness."

"The Rhine is to-day a barrier indispensable to the safety of Western Europe—indispensable, therefore, to civilization. ... By renouncing the Rhine as a natural barrier, we should be conniving at an inconceivable, a monstrous situation. Germany would be able to continue her enterprises as though she had been victorious—the very Germany that has sent millions of human beings to death, the very Germany that planned to annihilate our country and leave her a heap of ashes, the very Germany that plotted to dominate the world by brute force—blood-stained, crime-stained Germany."

"I was convinced then—and my conviction has not since faltered—that the Treaty [of Versailles] then in the making, which I was not allowed to modify, was bad for the safety of France. Very bad. It was full of flaws, it was fundamentally wrong, and cannot fail one day to have the worst results. On the day when it is apparent in all its evil, when France perceives that her interests were improperly defended, she will rise in deep anger against those who so imperfectly handled that defence."

"I stressed the importance always attached by Moltke to the Rhine question. I summarized his principle thus: ‘The bone of contention between Paris and Berlin is the Rhine; whichever holds the river is certain of dominating the other.’ ... To keep the 1914 frontier open to a menace aggravated by the destruction of Russia, and to expose France once more to the devastation she has suffered during the last five years, would be a crime against our country. There is only one remedy: the occupation of the Rhine."

"[T]he treaty [of Versailles]...provided for a fifteen-year occupation of the Rhineland, with retreats every five years. Such a guarantee, I said without mincing my words, was ‘from the military point of view, null; it will merely be an increase of work for the Allied occupation.’ I went on to say that whereas the treaty was non-existent as promoter of our security, it was distinctly bad for reparations. ... I asked who would be judge of the situation if we sought to reoccupy the Rhineland because of an infringement of terms by Germany. The Commission for Reparations would not suffice, I said. It cannot be denied that I was right on this point."

"The Rhineland question is controlled by the Rhine. The river is the deciding factor. The master of the Rhine is the master of the surrounding country. Whichever side does not control the Rhine has lost."

"I bluntly remarked to M. Klotz, the Finance Minister: ‘With the treaty you have just signed, sir, you can expect with certainty to be paid in monkey tricks.’"

"[O]ur Allies proposed the disarmament of Germany. It cannot be too often asserted that such a step would give us a mere temporary, precarious, illusory security. It is practically impossible to prevent Germany from arming herself in secret."

"Germany is about to join [the League of Nations]. It will be alleged that she conforms in spirit to that of the League. If you hope that she will desire to maintain the frontiers forced on her, which she has never acknowledged in her heart, and which, bluntly speaking, she loathes and yearns to destroy—if you can hope that, you must have more than your share of naïveté."

"A four years' war and the subsequent peace have divided Europe into two sections, the winners and the losers. The winners have even less reason to make war than in 1914. Peace will never be threatened by them. Does that hold true also of the losers? Have they resigned themselves to their defeat and the moral and material losses it entails? Who can say? Germany, for instance, was for centuries moulded in character and instincts by Prussia, who regarded war as a lucrative national industry; she will experience much difficulty in changing her mentality and outlook."

"The will to conquer is the first condition of victory."

"I am conscious of having served England as I served my own country."

"A radish will never stand in the way of victory."

"None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear."

"Weygand tells us that many of his visitors, French and foreign, were rather shy at finding themselves in the presence of the Chief who had commanded millions of men, and whose name for eight months had embodied all the trust and all the hopes of the Allied nations, the victor in the greatest battle in history. They left his presence impressed by the greatness of his intellect and of his soul, and fascinated by his simplicity. "They made no mistake; they had been in the presence of true greatness, with which there is always simplicity.""

"He rallied over and over again, and there was talk, at one time, of a move to the south of France, but it was not to be. When sitting in his chair by the window on the evening of Wednesday, the 20th of March, he was seized with a heart attack just before they were about to move him to his bed. Extreme unction according to the rites of his Church was administered by a priest from the neighboring church of St. Clotilde before he passed away, unconscious at the last, and Madame Foch was with him at the end. The closing of the shutters of his window told the outside world that all was over. Within half an hour there arrived tokens of sympathy, flowers and messages from the President, from members of the Government, and from the British Ambassador. The Chamber of Deputies was sitting at the time, and M. Poincaré, the Prime Minister, announced the death of the great Marshal, adding with emotion: "Marshal Foch was not only a great soldier, he was a great citizen. I know that the Chamber will associate itself with the national mourning." M. Flanderi, the Vice-President of the Chamber, said: "To try to make any eulogy of Marshal Foch would be to dim the glory which surrounds his memory in the thoughts of all his grateful countrymen. I am sure that I shall be interpreting Parliament's wishes in addressing our supreme homage to his memory and in sending our condolences to his family." Members of the Chamber were visibly moved as they filed out quietly. Within a few hours there arrived condolences and tributes to his memory from all parts of France and the peoples of foreign countries. It is said that the Marshal's last words were: "Allons-y"- Let us go. He was ready."

"On Armistice Day, the German armies had marched homeward in good order. "They fought well," said Marshal Foch, Generalissimo of the Allies, with the laurels bright upon his brow, speaking in soldierly mood: "let them keep their weapons." But he demanded that the French frontier should henceforth be the Rhine. Germany might be disarmed; her military system shivered in fragments; her fortresses dismantled: Germany might be impoverished; she might be loaded with measureless indemnities; she might become a prey to internal feuds: but all this would pass in ten years or in twenty. The indestructible might "of all the German tribes" would rise once more and the unquenched fires of warrior Prussia glow and burn again. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift-flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French Army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. Very different were the sentiments and views of the English-speaking world, without whose aid France must have succumbed. The territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles left Germany practically intact. She still remained the largest homogeneous racial block in Europe. When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.""

"France had been bled white by the war. The generation that had dreamed since 1870 of a war of revenge had triumphed, but at a deadly cost in national life-strength. It was a haggard France that greeted the dawn of victory. Deep fear of Germany pervaded the French nation on the morrow of their dazzling success. It was this fear that had prompted Marshal Foch to demand the Rhine frontier for the safety of France against her far larger neighbour. But the British and American statesmen held that the absorption of German-populated districts in French territory was contrary to the Fourteen Points and to the principles of nationalism and self-determination upon which the Peace Treaty was to be based. They therefore withstood Foch and France. They gained Clemenceau by promising: first, a joint Anglo-American guarantee for the defence of France; secondly, a demilitarised zone; and thirdly, the total, lasting disarmament of Germany. Clemenceau accepted this in spite of Foch’s protests and his own instincts. The Treaty of Guarantee was signed accordingly by Wilson and Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty. They repudiated President Wilson’s signature. And we, who had deferred so much to his opinions and wishes in all this business of peacemaking, were told without much ceremony that we ought to be better informed about the American Constitution."

"I met General Foch... He corresponded more with the British idea of what a typical Frenchman is like—vivacious, demonstrative, emphatic and gesticulatory. He talked just as much with his hands and arms as he did with his tongue. But whether he expressed himself with hand or voice he always talked well and to the point. His high broad forehead and his penetrating eye proved him a man of exceptional gifts. I asked him if he had any message for the British Cabinet and he said, "Tell them there will be no more retreats." I asked him whether I could also tell them there would be any more advances. He hesitated and was evidently perplexed by the question. After a perceptible halt he replied: "That depends on the men and material you will be able to throw into the battle line." He said that the Belgians had been obliged to retreat before the German advance, but his advice to them had been, "If you want to keep your country, dig yourselves into it, and hang on to it!""

"[On 25 March 1918 there was] a Conference held at Pétain's Headquarters, Clemenceau, Loucheur, Pétain and Foch being also present. Pétain took a very pessimistic view... Foch, who seems to have spoken with energy and determination, took a different view of the situation. He thought the danger of the German push to break in between the French and British in the direction of Amiens was so formidable that risks must be taken in other directions. In his opinion, even more divisions must, if possible, be thrown in, and, by a great effort, this might be done more quickly than Pétain thought possible. It is in an emergency that the real quality of a man comes out. In front of this grave crisis both Pétain and Haig were bewildered and incapable of the action which a desperate situation demanded, but Foch rose to the occasion with the might of a giant. That accounts for the complete change which Milner found in the attitude of both Commanders-in-Chief towards this great old General. They were now anxious to retrace the fatal steps they had conjointly taken on the Versailles decision and to secure the help of Foch to extricate them from the dilemma in which their repudiation of his supremacy had landed the Allied Armies."

"Haig clearly took a desperate view of the position... Pétain expressed an identical opinion about the same time to Clemenceau, and according to Poincaré was actually ordering a retreat of the French Army to the south. Clemenceau had agreed with Pétain. It would look, therefore, as if the two Commanders at this Conference on the evening of the 24th had come to the same conclusion. The supreme courage of Foch saved the situation. This was the greatest moment in his career."

"He (Clemenceau) broke off to confide in me sadly that General Pétain was contemplating the retreat of the French Army to the south while the British Army retired towards the north. Pétain, added Clemenceau, had given orders on this basis. Foch confirmed this last piece of information and told me of the order to retreat which Pétain had given. "The President of the Council (Clemenceau)," added Foch, "has only just lately begun to take part in military matters; he had accepted Pétain's point of view, but I declined to take any responsibility for it. I sent M. Clemenceau a note to tell him my views. Common sense indicates that when the enemy wishes to begin making a hole, you do not make it wider. You close it, or you try to close it. We have only got to try and to have the will; the rest will be easy. You stick to your ground, you defend it foot by foot. We did that at Ypres, we did it at Verdun." And Foch stuck to his point with the same energy before Clemenceau, the senator and the deputy."

"Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source."

"In f-major, c* [a C major chord] is a sonority contained within the overtones of the tonic f* [a F major chord]."

"Cacher l’Art par l’Art lui même. Conceal Art by Art itself."

"Though he was no judge of librettos, Jean-Philippe Rameau raised the musical side of opera to a new level and in his ballets introduced many novel descriptive effects – the French loved these – such as the earthquake in Les Indes galantes."

"The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means."

"When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress."

"All of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it…The great stroke of luck for the military class’s terrorism is that no one recognizes it. People don’t recognize the militarized part of their identity, of their consciousness."

"Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed the hidden side of wealth."

"The thing about collaborators is that you don’t know you are one whereas as a member of the resistance, you do. [In WWII,] the worst cases of collaboration weren’t among the real collaborators, that official militia, but among the people at large, who were collaborators without knowing it, by a sort of laxity, an apathy."

"a caste of "technology monks" is being created in our times, and that there exist monasteries of sorts whose goal it is to pave the way for a new kind of "civilisation"; one that has nothing to do with civilisation as we remember it. The work of these technology monks is not carried out in the way that it was in the Middle Ages. Rather, it is carried out through the revaluation of knowledge, like that achieved for Antiquity. The contribution of monks to the rediscovery of Antiquity is well known... And with information monotheism comes what I think of as the greatest danger of all, the slide into a future without humanity."

"at the same time almost as much work is going into the development of the information bomb; a bomb that will have the same destructive effects on society's capacity to remember its past, a past that has a structure of its own and shapes the present."

"What he resists is not technology proper, but the propensity for us to confer upon technology a salvific function. Virilio, in other words, resists the mythologizing of technology, and he does so because it is precisely by idealizing technology that we come to unthinkingly embrace it."

"Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician."

"The "styles" are a lie."

"Une maison est une machine-à-habiter."

"You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful." That is Architecture. Art enters in."

"It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution."

"Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city."

"The Despot is not a man. It is the Plan. The correct, realistic, exact plan."

"The object of this edict is to enlighten the present and future citizens of Chandigarh about the basic concepts of planning of the city so that they become its guardians and save it from whims of individuals."

"The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach."

"Vehicular traffic is completely forbidden in the green strips, where tranquility shall reign and the curse of noise shall not penetrate."

"The age of personal statues is gone. No personal statues shall be erected in the city or parks of Chandigarh. The city is planned to breathe the new sublimated spirit of art. Commemoration of persons shall be confined to suitably placed bronze plaques."

"The truthfulness of materials of constructions, concrete, bricks and stone, shall be maintained in all buildings constructed or to be constructed. The seed of Chandigarh is well sown. It is for the citizens to see that the tree flourishes."

"Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep."

"Vous savez, c'est la vie qui a raison, l'architecte qui a tort."

"A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe."

"My own duty and my aim is to try and raise people out of their misery, away from catastrophe; to provide them with happiness, with a contented existence, with harmony. My own goal is to establish or re-establish harmony between people and their environment."

"Mais en vertu de quel principe biologique fondamental, le plus grand nombre serait-il préservé de l’erreur?"

"It's better to act and to regret / Than to regret not to have acted"

"No bird can ever fly / like a heart can rise so high"

"A friendship that can be ended / didn't ever start"

"So you must always remember / that time ends the beauty"

"I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment."

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause."

"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."

"Un philosophe digne de ce nom n'a jamais dit qu'une seule chose : encore a-t-il plutôt cherché à la dire qu'il ne l'a dite véritablement. Et il n'a dit qu'une seule chose parce qu'il n'a su qu'un seul point : encore fut-ce moins une vision qu'un contact..."

"The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind."

"Je dirais qu'il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d'action."

"Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it."

"The remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind."

"Why did we obey? The question hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habit of deferring to our parents and teachers. All the same we knew very well that it was because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, in our eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in relation to us"

"The spectacle of what religions have been in the past, of what certain religions still are to-day, is indeed humiliating for human intelligence. What a farrago of error and folly!'"

"People talk, indeed, of a "primitive mentality", as, for example, to-day that of the inferior races, and in days gone by that of humanity in general, at whose door the responsibility for superstition should be laid."

"Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science. What the mystic finds waiting for him, then, is a humanity which has been prepared to listen to his message by other mystics invisible and present in the religion which is actually taught. Indeed his mysticism itself is imbued with this religion, for such was its starting point. His theology will generally conform to that of the theologians. His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually. And this he can do easily, since theology has tapped that very current whose source is the mystical. Thus his mysticism is served by religion, against the day when religion becomes enriched by his mysticism. This explains the primary mission which he feels to be entrusted to him, that of an intensifier of religious faith."

"La société ouverte est celle qui embrasserait en principe l’humanité entière."

"Toute notre civilisation est aphrodisiaque"

"Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods (la fonction essentielle de l'universe, qui est une machine à faire des dieux)."

"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

"Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over ignorance."

"Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, James, Bergson all are united in one earnest attempt, the attempt to reinstate man with his high spiritual claims in a place of importance in the cosmic scheme."

"Thérèse of Lisieux was one of the sources of inspiration for the philosopher Henri Bergson during the final stage of his search, in which he found God thanks to the testimony of mystics."

"The clock... is a piece of power-machinery whose "product" is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences: the special world of science. ...while human life has regularities of its own... time is measured not by the calendar but by the events that occupy it. ...if growth has its own duration and regularities, behind it are not simply matter and motion but the facts of development: in short, history. And while mechanical time is strung out in a succession of mathematically isolated instants, organic time—what Bergson calls duration—is cumulative in its effects. ...organic time moves only in one direction—through the cycle of birth, growth, development, decay, and death—and the past that is already dead remains present in the future that has still to be born."

"1919...Henri Bergson, Karl Barth, Ernst Cassirer, Havelock Ellis, Karl Jaspers, John Maynard Keynes, Rudolf Steiner—indelible figures—were all active in their various spheres."

"One of the bad effects of an anti-intellectual philosophy, such as that of Bergson, is that it thrives upon the errors and confusions of the intellect. Hence it is led to prefer bad thinking to good, to declare every momentary difficulty insoluble, and to regard every foolish mistake as revealing the bankruptcy of intellect and the triumph of intuition. There are in Bergson’s works many allusions to mathematics and science, and to a careless reader these allusions may seem to strengthen his philosophy greatly. As regards science, especially biology and physiology, I am not competent to criticize his interpretations. But as regards mathematics, he has deliberately preferred traditional errors in interpretation to the more modern views which have prevailed among mathematicians for the last eighty years. In this matter, he has followed the example of most philosophers. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the infinitesimal calculus, though well developed as a method, was supported, as regards its foundations, by many fallacies and much confused thinking. Hegel and his followers seized upon these fallacies and confusions, to support them in their attempt to prove all mathematics self-contradictory. Thence the Hegelian account of these matters passed into the current thought of philosophers, where it has remained long after the mathematicians have removed all the difficulties upon which the philosophers rely. And so long as the main object of philosophers is to show that nothing can be learned by patience and detailed thinking, but that we ought rather to worship the prejudices of the ignorant under the title of ‘reason’ if we are Hegelians, or of ‘intuition’ if we are Bergsonians, so long philosophers will take care to remain ignorant of what mathematicians have done to remove the errors by which Hegel profited."

"The philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration, essentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a demi-mondaine philosophy. Leave out the demi; call it mondaine, mundane. Mundane — yes, a philosophy for the world and not for philosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. The world desires illusion (mundus vult decipi) — either the illusion antecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent to reason, which is religion."

"As the [nineteenth] century progressed, we find that truth itself tended to be regarded no longer as eternal and changeless but as time-dependent. ...This radically new point of view received its extreme formulation in the philosophy of the 'modern Heraclitus', Henri Bergson... for whom ultimate reality was neither 'being' nor 'being changed' but the continual process of 'change' itself, which he called la durée. An authoritative critical account of Bergson's eloquently expressed philosophy... has been given by... Leszek Kolakowski... Bergson achieved the unique distinction of being both scathingly criticized by Bertrand Russel (in 1912) and having his books placed on the Index Prohibitorum by the Holy Office in 1914—the year he was elected a member of the Académie Française! A more scientifically oriented philosophy of change than Bergon's was developed between the wars by... A. N. Whitehead... particularly in his book Process and Reality..."

"Magic has been confounded too long with the jugglery of mountebanks, the hallucinations of disordered minds and the crimes of certain unusual malefactors. There are otherwise many who would promptly explain Magic as the art of producing effects in the absence of causes; and on the strength of such a definition it will be said by ordinary people — with the good sense which characterises the ordinary, in the midst of much injustice — that Magic is an absurdity."

"It can have no analogy in fact with the descriptions of those who know nothing of the subject; furthermore, it is not to be represented as this or that by any person whomsoever: it is that which it is, drawing from itself only, even as mathematics do, for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and her laws."

"Magic is the science of the ancient magi; and the Christian religion, which silenced the counterfeit oracles and put a stop to the illusions of false gods, does, this notwithstanding, revere those mystic kings who came from the East, led by a star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle. They are elevated by tradition to the rank of kings, because magical initiation constitutes a true royalty; because also the great art of the magi is characterised by all adepts as the Royal Art, as the Holy Kingdom — Sanctum Regnum. The star which conducted the pilgrims is the same Burning Star which is met with in all initiations. For alchemists it is the sign of the quintessence, for magicians it is the Great Arcanum, for Kabalists the sacred pentagram."

"The conventional Hexagram presents in pictorial symbolism the root doctrine of the Hermetic Emerald Tablet: "That which is above is equal to that which is below." It is the sign of the interpenetration of worlds."

"The Great Work is the attainment of that middle point in which equilibrating force abides. Furthermore, the reactions of equilibrated force do everywhere conserve universal life by the perpetual motion of birth and death. It is for this reason that the philosophers have compared their gold to the sun. For the same reason that same gold cures all diseases of the soul and communicates immortality."

"Those who have found this middle point are true and wonderworking adepts of science and reason. They are masters of the wealth of worlds, confidants and friends of the princes of heaven itself, and Nature obeys them because they will what is willed by the law which is the motive power of Nature. It is this which the Saviour of the world spoke of as the Kingdom of Heaven; this also is the Sanctum Regnum of the Holy Kabalah. It is the Crown and Ring of Solomon ; it is the Sceptre of Joseph which the stars obeyed in heaven and the harvests on earth."

"Happy in the time of Jesus were those who wept! Happy, now, are those who can laugh, because laughter is the attribute of man, as the great prophet of the Renaissance, Rabelais, said. Laughter is forbearance; laughter is philosophy. The heavens clear when they laugh, and the great secret of divine omnipotence resides in an eternal smile!"

"We want to be clearly understood on this point. We are not trying to say that signs and rites are a big piece of humbug. They would be such if people did not need them; but we have to recognize that everyone has not the same degree of intelligence. Children have always had fairy stories told to them, and these stories will continue to be told as long as there are nurses and mothers. Children have faith and this is what saves them. Imagine a child of seven saying: 'I do not want to accept anything I cannot understand.' What could one teach such a monster? Accept what your teachers tell you to begin with, my fine fellow, then study it and, if you are not an idiot, you will understand it by-and-by."

"Progress is a possibility for the animal: it can be broken in, tamed and trained; but it is not a possibility for the fool, because the fool thinks he has nothing to learn. It is his place to dictate to others and put them right, and so it is impossible to reason with him. He will laugh you to scorn in saying that what he does not understand is not a meaningful proposition. 'Why don't I understand it, then?', he asks you, with marvellous impudence. To tell him it is because he is a fool would only be taken as an insult, so there is nothing you can say in reply. Everybody else sees it quite clearly, but he will never realize it.Here then, at the outset, is a potent secret which is inaccessible to the majority of people; a secret which they will never guess and which it would be useless to tell them: the secret of their own stupidity."

""Father, forgive them," said Jesus, "for they know not what they do." – People of good sense, whoever you may be, I will add, do not listen to them, for they know not what they say."

"1. All things proclaim an active, thinking cause. 2. The living unity heeds number's laws. 3. That which contains all is by nothing bound. 4. Before all else, He everywhere is found. 5. He, the sole Master—praise to Him alone! 6. To pure hearts His true doctrine He makes known. 7. Faith's works a single guide have, under heaven. 8. So one sole altar and one law are given. 9. What the Eternal founds, forever stays. 10. From high, down to our time, He rules each phase. 11. Great is His mercy, and His wrath severe. 12. He sends a king unto His people dear. 13. The tomb but leads to new lands by and by, Life is immortal, death alone shall die."

"Four letters make the Name that rules all names."

""The sign of the Cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Pater, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning — one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: To thee; then he added, belong; and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast — the kingdom; then, to the left shoulder — justice; to the right shoulder — and mercy. Then he joined the two hands, adding: throughout the generating cycles: 'Tibi sunt Malchut, et Geburah et Chassed per AEonas' — a sign of the Cross, absolutely and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely lose."

"Bloody and hideous facts; acts of revolting superstition, arrests, and executions of stupid ferocity. "Burn every body!" the Inquisition seemed to say — God will easily sort out His own! Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of "magic." But, at the same time, how many great culprits escaped this unjust and sanguinary justice! This is what Bodin makes us fully appreciate."

"Magic is the traditional science of the secrets of Nature which has been transmitted to us from the Magi."

"THE GREAT Magical Agent, by us termed the Astral Light, by others the soul of the earth, and designated by old chemists under the names of Azoth and MAGNESIA, this occult, unique and indubitable force, is the key of all empire, the secret of all power. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the serpent of the Edenic Mystery; it is the universal glass of visions, [...] To have control of the Great Magical Agent there are two operations necessary – to concentrate and project, or, in other words, to fix and to move."

"I speak of the imagination, which the Kabalists term the DIAPHANE or TRANSLUCID. Imagination, in effect, is like the soul's eye; therein forms are outlined and preserved; thereby we behold the reflections of the invisible world; it is the glass of visions and the apparatus of magical life. By its intervention we heal diseases, modify the seasons, warn off death from the living and raise the dead to life, because it is the imagination which exalts will and gives it power over the Universal Agent."

"The force of itself is blind, but can be directed by the will of man and is influenced by prevailing opinions. This universal fluid [the Astral Light] – if we decide to regard it as a fluid – being the common medium of all nervous organisms and the vehicle of all sensitive vibrations, establishes an actual physical solidarity between impressionable persons, and transmits from one to another the impressions of imagination and of thought.""

"[...] the hieroglyphic work of Hermes, being the Tarot or Book of Thoth.""

"Magic, or rather magical power, comprehends two things, a science and a force: without the force the science is nothing, or rather it is a danger."

"The ceremonies being, as we have said, artificial methods for creating a habit of will, become unnecessary when the habit is confirmed."

"Magic is an instrument of divine goodness or demoniac pride, but it is the annihilation of earthly joys and the pleasures of mortal life."

"There is a true and a false science, a Divine and an Infernal Magic – in other words, one which is delusive and tenebrous."

"Necromancy, and Goetia, which is Evil Magic, do produce such shells and demons, apparitions of deceit."

"In Black Magic, the Devil means the employment of the Grand Magical Agent for a wicked purpose by a perverted Will."

"To practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage."

"The science of spirits is therefore summed up entirely in the science of Jesus Christ. Angels and demons are purely hypothetical or legendary beings; let them remain in poetry, they cannot belong to science."*"Magic, the mere name became a crime and the common hatred was formulated in this sentence: “Magicians to the flames!” – as it was shouted some centuries earlier: “To the lions with the Christians!"

"Magic is the divinity of man conquered by science in union with faith; the true Magi are Men-Gods, in virtue of their intimate union with the divine principle."

"ALL religions have preserved the remembrance of a primitive book, written in hieroglyphs by the sages of the earliest epoch of the world. [...] The tradition in question rests altogether on the one dogma of Magic: the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible."

"He knows the significance of all symbolisms [sic] and of all religions; he dares to practise or abstain from them without hypocrisy and without impiety; and he is silent upon the one dogma of supreme initiation. He knows the existence and nature of the Great Magical Agent; he dares perform the acts and give utterance to the words which make it subject to human will, and he is silent upon the mysteries of the Great Arcanum."

"I will go further and affirm that magical circles and magnetic currents establish themselves, and have an influence, according to fatal laws, upon those on whom they can act. [...] The man who is eccentric in his genius is one who attempts to form a circle by combating the central attractive force of established chains and currents."

"In the “Ritual” it will be our task to estimate the sequence of truly magical ceremonies and evocations which constitute the great work of vocation under the name of the Exercises Of St. Ignatius."

"The sorcerer and sorceress were almost invariably a species of human toad, swollen with long-enduring rancours. They were poor, repulsed by all and consequently full of hatred. The fear which they inspired was their consolation and their revenge; poisoned themselves by a society of which they had experienced nothing but the rebuffs and the vices, they poisoned in their turn all those who were weak enough to fear them, and avenged upon beauty and youth their accursed old age and their atrocious ugliness."

"The most important magical instruments are the wand, the sword, the lamp, the chalice, the altar and the tripod. In the operations of Transcendental and Divine Magic, the lamp, wand and chalice are used; in the works of Black Magic, the wand is replaced by the sword and the lamp by the candle of Cardan.""

"The Magus must have also another avocation than that of magician. Magic is not a trade."

"To live like an anchorite, without the superstitious ignorance which leads him to such a course of life, this is wisdom indeed, and power is the reward."

"He looks on the wicked as invalids whom one must pity and cure; the world, with its errors and vices, is to him God's hospital, and he wishes to serve in it."

"They are without fears and without desires, dominated by no falsehood, sharing no error, loving without illusion, suffering without impatience, reposing in the quietude of eternal thought... a Magus cannot be ignorant, for magic implies superiority, mastership, majority, and majority signifies emancipation by knowledge. The Magus welcomes pleasure, accepts wealth, deserves honour, but is never the slave of one of them; he knows how to be poor, to abstain, and to suffer; he endures oblivion willingly because he is lord of his own happiness, and expects or fears nothing from the caprice of fortune. He can love without being beloved; he can create imperishable treasures, and exalt himself above the level of honours or the prizes of the lottery. He possesses that which he seeks, namely, profound peace. He regrets nothing which must end, but remembers with satisfaction that he has met with good in all. His hope is a certitude, for he knows that good is eternal and evil transitory. He enjoys solitude, but does not fly the society of man; he is a child with children, joyous with the young, staid with the old, patient with the foolish, happy with the wise. He smiles with all who smile, and mourns with all who weep; applauding strength, he is yet indulgent to weakness; offending no one, he has himself no need to pardon, for he never thinks himself offended; he pities those who misconceive him, and seeks an opportunity to serve them; by the force of kindness only does he avenge himself on the ungrateful..."

"Judge not; speak hardly at all; love and act."

"He whom we behold perishing poor and abandoned is Cornelius Agrippa, less of a magician than any, though the vulgar persist in regarding him as a more potent sorcerer than all."

"There was much talk in the last century about an adept accused of charlatanism, who was termed in his lifetime the divine Cagliostro. It is known that he practised evocations and that in this art he was surpassed only by the illuminated Schroepffer."

"..I am not going to New York, I am leaving Paris. That's quite different. Long before the war [World War 1.] I already had a distaste for the 'artistic life' I was involved in. – It's quite the opposite of what I'm looking for. – And so I tried, through the Library, to escape from artists somewhat. Then, with the war, my incompatibility with this milieu grew. I wanted to go away at all costs. Where to? My only option was New York where I knew you [ Walter Pach, artist and friend of Duchamp] and where I hope to be able to escape leading the artistic life, if needs be through a job which will keep me very busy. I ask you to keep all this from my brothers [all his brothers were artists as well] because I know my leaving will be very painful for them. – the same goes for my father and sisters."

"I have impressed upon you my preoccupation with earning money so as to have a secure existence over there. That's the way it have to be.. .I am very happy to hear that you Walter Pach sold these canvasses for me and thank you very sincerely for your friendship. But I am afraid of getting to the stage of needing to sell canvases, In a word, of being a painter for a living. – So I'll be leaving probably on the 22nd or rather 29th May [1915], if the police authorities allow me to take the steamer."

"People talk of Pablo Picasso as the leader of the Cubists but, strictly speaking, he is no longer a Cubist. Today he is a Cubist, tomorrow he will be something else. The only true Cubists are Gleizes and Metzinger."

"Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N.Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp."

"They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibit Mr. Richard Mutt [= Long time scholars recognize R. Mutt was Duchamp himself; a growing number attribute credit Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, a bisexual dada artist living in New York who as a woman, needed a pseudonym to get into the Armory Exhibition]. The object was photographed by Alfred Steiglitz before disappearing and was never was exhibited. What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt fountain: 1. Some contented it was immoral, vulgar. 2. Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing."

"To be looked at [from the other side of his art-work 'The Glass'] with one eye, close to, for almost an hour."

"Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?"

"If a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of the unit of length."

"I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but never have time, so absorbed I am in playing chess. I play night and day and nothing in the whole world interests me more than finding the right move.. .Nothing transcendental going on here – strikes [in Buenos Aires, where chess competitions were organized that year for not professionals] a lot of strikes, the people are on the move. Painting interests me less and less."

"You [ Katherine Sophie Dreier; director of the Art Center in New York City; she co-founded with Duchamp and Man Ray the 'Sociéte Anonyme' in Manhattan in 1920] must understand: My attitude toward the book is based upon my attitude towards 'Art' since 1918 – so I am furious myself that you will accept only partly that attitude [in a new publication by Katherine Dreier]. It can be no more question of my life as an artist’s life: [because] I gave it up ten years ago; this period is long enough to prove that my intention to remain outside of any art manifestation is permanent.. .The third question is that I want to be alone as much as possible. This abrupt way to speak of my 'hardening process' is not meant to be mean, but is the result of '42 years of age'.. ..10 000 apologies for this rough letter and affectueusement Dee -"

"De Chirico [Italian painter, later admired by the Surrealists as 'early Surrealist'] found himself in 1912 confronted with the problem of following one of the roads already opened or of opening a new road. He avoided Fauvism as well as Cubism and introduced what could be called 'metaphysical painting'. Instead of exploiting the coming medium of abstraction, he organized on his canvases the meeting of elements which could only meet in a 'metaphysical world'. These elements, painted in the minutest technique, were 'exposed' on a horizontal plane in orthodox perspective. This technique, in opposition to the Cubist or the purely abstract formula in full bloom at the moment, protected de Chirico’s position and allowed him to lay down the foundation of what was to become Surrealism ten years later."

"The Dada movement was an anti-movement which corresponded to a need born of the first World War. Although neither literary nor pictorial in essence, Dada found its exponents in painters and writers scattered all over the world. Max Ernst's activities in Cologne in 1917 made him the foremost representative of the Dada painters. Between 1919 and 1921 his paintings, drawings and collages depicting the world of the subconscious were already a foretaste of Surrealism.. .In fact his previous achievements had certainly influenced, to a great extent, the literary Surrealist exploration of the subconscious."

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes."

"Miro came of age as an artist just at the time World War 1. ended. With the end of the war came the end of all the new pre-war art conceptions. A young painter could not start as a Cubist or a Futurist, and Dada was the only manifestation at the moment. Miro began by painting farm scenes from the countryside of Barcelona, his native land.. .A few years later he came to Paris [circa 1914] and found himself among the Dadaists who were, at that time, transmuting into Surrealism. In spite of this contact Miró kept aloof from any direct influence and showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction."

"..Yes, indeed, what have we been up to? I feel rather like I've retired to the country, in some remote province, for that's what my life is like in N. Y. I see few people and people don’t try to see me anymore as they know they bore me. I write to the Arensberg's once a year and they do the same. There is a general weariness which, I think, is not confined to our generation. To tell the truth, most people prefer war to peace.. .Well, there you are, my dear Yvonne. Nothing as usual. Chess as much as possible: at least chess players don’t talk -"

"Based on the metaphysical implications of the Dadaist dogma.. ..Arp's Reliefs [carvings] between 1916 and 1922 are among the most convincing illustrations of that anti- rationalistic era.. .Arp showed the importance of a smile to combat the sophistic theories of the moment. His poems of the same period stripped the word of its rational connotation to attain the most unexpected meaning through alliteration or plain nonsense."

"Received your letter and, almost at the same time, the long text at which I was overjoyed. You no doubt know that you are the only person in the world to have put together the gestation of the glass The Large Glass, circa 1923] in all its detail, including even the numerous intentions which were never executed [by Duchamp]. Your patient work has enabled me to relive a period of long years during which the notes were written for the 'Green Box' [the second of the three Boxes Duchamp created and this one was full of written notes] at the same time as the Glass [= The Large Glass] was taking shape. And I confess to you that, not having read these notes for a very long time, I had completely lost all recollection of numerous points not illustrated on the glass and which are a delight to me now [c. 25 years later]."

"Another important point which you so very accurately sensed concerns the idea that the glass in actual fact is not meant to be looked at (with 'aesthetic' eyes). It should be accompanied by a 'literary' text, as amorphous as possible, which never took shape. And the two elements, glass for the eyes, text for the ears and understanding, should complement each other and above all prevent one or the other from taking on an aesthetic-plastic or literary form. All in all, I am hugely indebted to you for having stripped bare my Bride stripped bare [the complete title is: The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), c. 1915 – 1923]."

"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."

"You were asking my opinion on your work of art, my dear Jean [= Duchamp's brother-in-law Jean Crotti, who asked Duchamp his comment on an art-work he made].. .Artists throughout the ages are like Monte Carlo gamblers and the blind lottery pulls some of them through and ruin others.. .I do not believe in painting per se – A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it and grant it their favors. In other words, no painters knows himself or what he is doing – There is no outward sign explaining why a Fra Angelico and a Leonardo [da Vinci] are equally 'recognized'. It all takes place at the level of our old friend luck."

"This long preamble just to tell you not to judge your own work as you are the last person to see it (with true eyes) – What you see neither redeems nor condemns it – All words used to explain or praise it are false translations of what is going on beyond sensations. You are, as we all are, obsessed by the accumulation of principles or anti-principles which generally cloud your mind with their terminology and, without knowing it, you are a prisoner of what you think is a liberated education – In your particular case, you are certainly the victim of the 'Ecole de Paris' [French abstract art movement which developed after world War 2.], a joke that’s lasted for 60 years."

"So if I say you that your paintings [which his brother-in-law recently made] have nothing in common with what we see generally classified and accepted, and that you have always managed to produce things that were entirely your own work, as I truly see it, that does not mean you have the right to be seated next to Leonardo - What's more, this originality is suicidal as it distances you from a 'clientele' used to 'copies of copiers', often referred to as 'tradition'- One more thing, your technique is not the 'expected' technique – It's your own personal technique, borrowed from nobody – and there again, this doesn't attract the clientele.. ..In a word, do less self-analysis and enjoy your work without worrying about opinions, your own as well as that of others."

"I am a great enemy of critical writing as all I see in these interpretations and comparisons with Kafka and others is just an opportunity to open up the floodgates of words which, overall, amounts to Carrouges or at times a translation of Carrouges – very free to makes his ideas look good. Obviously any work of art or literature, in the public domain, is automatically the subject of the victim of such transformations – and this is not just confined to the case of Carrouges. Every fifty years, El Greco is revised and adapted to the taste of the day, either overrated or underrated. The same goes for all surviving works of art. And this leads me to say that a work of art is made entirely by those who look at it or read it and make it survive by their acclaim or even their condemnation."

"Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing."

"If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All this decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out."

"Millions of artist create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity. In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally posterity include him in the primers of Art history. I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act."

"I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' – to be sure, without an attempt to a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion. Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in a raw state – 'à l'état brute' – bad, good or indifferent."

"In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions. His struggle towards the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions, which also cannot be fully self-conscious, at least on the aesthetic plane. The result of his struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of."

"Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This gap which represents the inability of the artist to express fully his intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal 'art coefficient', contained in the work."

"..we must remember that this 'art coefficient' is a personal expression of art 'à l'état brute', that is, still in a raw state, which must be 'refined' as pure sugar from molasses, by the spectator; the digit of this coefficient has no bearing whatsoever on his verdict.. ..the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the aesthetic scale."

"My brother [the sculptor artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon had a kitchen in his little house in Puteaux, and he had the idea of decorating it with pictures by his buddies. He asked Gleizes, Metzinger, , and I think Leger [all Cubist painters, then] to do some little paintings of the same size, like a sort of frieze. He asked me too, and I painted a coffee grinder which I made to explode."

"I wanted to kill art for myself.. ..a new thought for that object."

"the idea of movement.. ..just transferred from the Nude [ Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 - Duchamp painted this in 1912] into a bicycle wheel Bicycle wheel, his early ready-made from 1916-17]."

"In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called 'Pharmacy' after assign two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon. In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store an snow shovel on which I wrote 'In advance of the broken arm'. It was around that time that the word 'Readymade' came to mind to designate this form of manifestation."

"A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of these 'Readymade' was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste.. ..in fact a complete anesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the 'readymade'. That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal."

"I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of 'ready-mades' to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my 'ready-mades' against such contamination."

"Another aspect of the 'readymade' is its lack of uniqueness.. ..the replica of a 'readymade' delivering the same message; in fact nearly every one of the 'ready-made's existing today is not an original in the conventional sense. Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready made products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'ready-made's aided' and also works of assemblage."

"First, there's the idea of the movement of the train [in his painting 'Nude (Study), Sad Young Man on a Train', (made in 1911–12)] and then that of the sad young man who is in a corridor and who is moving about; thus there are two parallel movements corresponding to each other. Then, there is the distortion of the young man—I had called this elementary parallelism. It was a formal decomposition; that is, linear elements following each other like parallels and distorting the object. The object is completely stretched out, as if elastic. The lines follow each other in parallels, while changing subtly to form the movement, or the form of the young man in question. I also used this procedure in the [painting] 'Nude Descending a Staircase'."

"The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place.. .All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work into contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

"..the thing was to choose one [a ready-made object] that you were not attracted by.. ..and that was difficult because anything becomes beautiful if you look at it long enough.. .[My intention was to] completely eliminate the existence of taste, bad or good or indifferent."

"He [= Duchamp himself, writing in the third person] CHOSE IT. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object."

"In French there is an old expression, 'la patte', meaning the artist's touch, his personal style, his 'paw'. I wanted to get away from la patte and all that retinal painting."

"The only man in the past whom I really respect was Seurat.. .He didn't let his hand interfere with his mind."

"..because his applying paint to it [the sculpture 'Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans', created by the American pré-Pop Art artist Jasper Johns ] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting?] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it. – it's just the idea of imitating the beer can that is important."

"The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.. .I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."

"Somebody in Germany [the German artist Joseph Beuys, who frequently visited America to discuss and to do performances] has been talking about my 'silence', saying that it is overrated. What does that mean? [this quotes you find also in Joseph Beuys' quotes on Wikiquote], he himself heard this 'rumor' from several American artists! (Joseph Beuys continued: 'I am convinced that he [= Duchamp] knew very well what it meant. If he was unsure about it, he could have written me a letter')."

"Well, this man [the T.V. interviewer of Jasper Johns,] wanted to know why I stopped painting [the so-called famous 'Silence of Duchamp'].. ..and he had said [it was] because of dealers and money and various reasons. Largely moralistic reasons.. ..But you know; it wasn’t like that. It’s like you break a leg; you don't mean to do it."

"..paint was always [in history of painting] a means to an end, whether the end was religious, social, decorative or romantic. Now it's become an end in itself.."

"[ Impressionism was] the beginning of a cult devoted to the material on the canvas – the actual pigment.."

"I was interested in ideas - not merely in visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind."

"I wanted to get away from the physical act of painting.. .For me the title ('Fresh Widow', 1920), with inscription under: 'Fresh Widow Copyright Rose Sélavy, 1920', [probably referring to all the widows because of the many killings of soldiers in World War, 1. which ended in 1918] was very important.. .I was interested in ideas – not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind."

"And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp - for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to - a movement for each person and open for everybody."

"Marcel Duchamp's silence is overrated"

"Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art.. .He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object"."

"His [Marcel Duchamp's] idea was that anything could be art by focusing the mind to think of it as art. My images are similar but at the time my work was first being shown, 1958-'59, I was unfamiliar with Duchamp and Dada. Everyone said my work was Dada, so I read on it, went to Philadelphia to see the 'Arensberg Duchamp collection', was delighted by it and later met him [Duchamp].. .But it was all more a coincidence. Perhaps it’s that certain ideas get into the air, ideas that come out of our living and out of the environment automatically"

"The Duchamp thing is played both ways. The 'Urinal' [a famous 'readymade' art-work of Marcel Duchamp] signed R. Mutt, is played as an art object, and then as the opposite of a legitimate art object. And it vacillates back and forth. Well perhaps that is a nice thing, but I don't know. I find Duchampianism a bore. It’s very adolescent. I was very much excited by it when I was a teenager.. .My tradition is quite different. My conscious tradition is through Constantin Brâncuși, and Brancusi just strikes me as an infinitely wiser and infinitely more talented, an infinitely stronger figure than Duchamp. I think I could have done my work if Duchamp had not lived. I could not have done my work if Brancusi had not lived."

"In discussing his work [of Marcel Duchamp], it is necessary to avoid overrating his silence. I hold him in a very high esteem, but I have to reject his silence. Duchamp was simply finished. He had run out of ideas; he was unable to come up with anything important.. ..I would say that even the bourgeois tendencies in Duchamp's work – i.e., a form of provocative, bohemian behavior intended to 'épater le bourgeois'- follow the same path. Duchamp started out from here and wanted to shock the bourgeoisie, and because of that he destroyed his creative powers.. ..The content of Duchamp's silence refers to the aim of leaving the subconscious passive, of developing it. This is the aspect of Duchamp, which is related to Surrealism. The surrealists asserted that they could live with their subconscious; they thought they were above reality, but instead they were beneath it. They thought they could fish in muddy waters.. ..but to my mind, the images which emerged have a repressive effect."

"I just like - just breathing. I like breathing better than working."

"Asked to submit something for display by the Society of Independent Artists in New York [in 1917], Duchamp sent a urinal. Duchamp of course knew the history of art. He knew what had been achieved - how over the centuries art had been a powerful vehicle that called upon the highest development of the human creative vision and demanded exacting technical skill; and he knew that art had an awesome power to exalt the senses, the intellects, and the passions of those who experience it. Duchamp reflected on the history of art and decided to make a statement. The artist is a not great creator—Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special object — it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling — at best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on."

"Quand même"

"Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third. And to this end the actor must forget his personality and throw aside his joys and sorrows. He must present the public with the reality of a being who for him is only a fiction. With his own eyes, he must shed the tears of the other. With his own voice, he must groan the anguish of the other. His own heart beats as if it would burst, for it is the other's heart that beats in his heart. And when he retires from a tragic or dramatic scene, if he has properly rendered his character, he must be panting and exhausted."

"Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist."

"Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."

"Acting is all internal, but must be externalized."

"Victor Hugo could not promise without keeping his word. He was not like me: I promise everything with the firm intention of keeping my promises, and two hours after I have forgotten all about them. If any one reminds me of what I have promised, I tear my hair, and to make up for my forgetfulness I say anything, I buy presents — in fact, I complicate my life with useless worries. It has always been thus, and always will be so."

"My fame had become annoying for my enemies, and a little trying, I confess, for my friends. But at that time all this stir and noise amused me vastly. I did nothing to attract attention. My somewhat fantastic tastes, my paleness and thinness, my peculiar way of dressing, my scorn of fashion, my general freedom in all respects, made me a being quite apart from all others. I did not recognise the fact. I did not read, I never read, the newspapers. So I did not know what was said about me, either favourable or unfavourable. Surrounded by a court of adorers of both sexes, I lived in a sunny dream."

"Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrity when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves. They are at the beginning of a series of small worries, thunderbolts hidden under flowers, but they know how to hold in check that monster advertisement. It is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit out again at the public when it is vomiting its black gall. But those who are caught in the clutches of celebrity at the age of twenty two know nothing."

"I am so superstitious that if I had arrived when there was no sunshine I should have been wretched and most anxious until after my first performance. It is a perfect torture to be superstitious to this degree, and, unfortunately for me, I am ten times more so now than I was in those days, for besides the superstitions of my own country, I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me. I cannot walk a single step or make any movement or gesture, sit down, go out, look at the sky or ground, without feeling some reason for hope or despair, until at last, exasperated by the trammels put upon my actions by my thought, I defy all superstitions and just act as I want to act."

"Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget."

"Chicago people are very fond of Madame Bernhardt. They want her to get a divorce and settle down with them."

"There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses— and then there is Sarah Bernhardt"

"She is the Muse of Poetry herself. Neither intelligence nor artistry have anything to do with it. She is guided by a secret instinct. She recites as the nightingale sings, as the wind sighs, as water murmurs, as Lamartine once wrote."

"A symphony of golden flutes and muted strings; silver dawn lit by lambent lightnings, soft stars and a clear-cut crescent moon."

""It is more than a crime; it is a political fault," —words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others."

"Death is an eternal sleep."

"Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!"

"[Concerning the love La Fontaine felt for animals] He follows their emotions, he represents their reasonings, he becomes tender, he becomes gay, he participates in their feelings. The fact is, he lived in them. […] The animals contain all the materials of man-sensations, judgments, images."

"J'ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure."

"The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies."

"One puts in the hands of each adult a ballot, but on the back of each soldier a knapsack: with what promises of massacre and bankruptcy for the Twentieth Century, with what exasperation of ill will and distrust, with what loss of wholesome effort, by what a perversion of productive discoveries, accompanied by what an improvement in the means of destruction, by what recoil toward the inferior and unhealthy forms of the old combative societies, by what a backward step toward egoistic and brutal instincts, toward the sentiments, manner and morality of ancient cities and barbaric tribes, we know all too well."

"Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race, by instinct, imagination, and souvenir, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France."

"The critic who attempted to carry on 's ideas, who developed them in his own way and added his own distinct and remarkable contribution, was Hippolyte Taine. As an influence on all literary output since their time, the effect of the ideas of these two men is still extraordinary ..."

"M. Taine, looking as usual for formulas and labels, says that the most complete description of Balzac is that he was a man of business—a man of business in debt."

"Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts."

"On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu."

"La science a fait de nous des dieux avant même que nous méritions d'être des hommes."

"If it is correct to say that there will always be rightist temperaments and leftist temperaments, it is nevertheless also correct to say that political philosophy is neither rightist nor leftist; it must simply be true."

"In so far as we are individuals, each of us is a fragment of a species, a part of this universe, a single dot in the immense network of forces and influences, cosmic, ethnic, historic, whose laws we obey. We are subject to the determination of the physical world. But each man is also a person, he is not subject to the stars and atoms; for he subsists entirely with the very subsistence of his spiritual soul, and the latter is in him a principle of creative unity, of independence and of freedom."

"In each of us there dwells a mystery, and that mystery is the human personality."

"Thus society is born, as something required by nature, and (because this nature is human nature) as something accomplished through a work of reason and will, and freely consented to. Man is a political animal, which means that the human person craves political life, communal life, not only with regard to the family community, but with regard to the civil community."

"The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet."

"The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies."

"A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me."

"We have just seen that perfection and contemplation imply each other by reason of love which is at once the essence of perfecton and “the source, the execize and the end” of contemplation. One can also show this mutual implication by the stressing the fact that under the regime of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is the state proper to perfection and to contemplation all at once. Saint Thomas teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are necessary for salvation, because we are too weak all by ourselves always to use as we should even the theological virtues and the infused moral virtues. […] For, as saint Bonavenure tell us, “the gifts immediately dispose one to contemplation”."

"Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence."

"The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge."

"What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve."

"It is enough that things exist for God to be unavoidable. Let us but grant to a bit of moss or the smallest ant its due nature as an ontological reality, and we can no longer escape the terrifying hand that made us."

"Things are opaque to us, and we are opaque to ourselves."

"To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being."

"Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself."

"Nothing is more vain than to seek to unite men by a philosophic minimum."

"There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism."

"In loving things and the being in them man should rather draw things up to the human level than reduce humanity to their measure."

"There is room neither for the poet nor for the contemplator in an egalitarian world."

"The supernatural light of the spirit is the only night from which the spirit can emerge alive."

"A community of free men cannot exist if its spiritual base is not solely law."

"Not only does the democratic state of mind stem from the inspiration of the Gospel, but it cannot exist without it."

"Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment. Here we have the first internal inconsistency of contemporary atheism: it proclaims that all religion must necessarily vanish away, and it is itself a religious phenomena."

"To redeem creation the saint wages war on the entire fabric of creation, with the bare weapons of truth and love."

"With all his sincerity and devotion, the authentic, absolute atheist is after all only an abortive saint, and at the same time, a mistaken revolutionist."

"The first step to be taken by everyone who wishes to act morally is to decide not to act according to the general customs and doings of his fellow-men."

"The hope of the coming of a new Christian era in our civilization is to my mind a hope for a distant future, a very distant future."

"It is not possible to escape from the results of the irruption of faith into the structures of our knowledge."

"The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher."

"To philosophize man must put his whole soul into play, in much the same manner that to run he must use his heart and lungs."

"In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block."

"For to love is to give what one is, his very being, in the most absolute, the most brazenly metaphysical, the least phenomenalizable sense of this word."

"It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist."

"It has never been recommended to confuse "loving" with "seeking to please"… ...Salome pleased Herod's guests; I can hardly believe she was burning with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist... ...she certainly did not envelop him in her love."

"The day when efficacy would prevail over truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would have prevailed against her."

"When one's function is to teach the loftiest wisdom, it is difficult to resist the temptation to believe that until you have spoken, nothing has been said."

"I beg everyone from the highest to the lowest to forgive me; I have given them all much very bad example."

"Make use of this very simple aspiration: you and I, my love, you and I, you and I, and never another nor more! To which you could add some burning words like: "since you are entirely good and all goodness itself; since you are entirely glorious and all glory itself; since you are entirely holy and all holiness itself!"

"This is what the Son of God desires of you: that he might be able to embellish, perfect and gain you lustre with the fullness of his gifts. Since he is so taken by your Beauty, which flows and gushes from him to you, as I have said, what he desires of you is that he might have the supreme pleasure of an eternity enjoying you and his gifts. Thus, everyone who proceeds to live in a way that is contrary to his own self, lives in God; his whole being is God-orientated; he sees nothing but God and himself."

"My exercise consists in a total elevation of the spite above all created and sense-objects. By this exercise I am securely concentrated within myself and gaze steadily at God who in a simple manner draws me to the state of simple unity and nakedness of spirit, which is called “simple idleness.” In this state of simplicity of rest I am passively possessed and held above every sense-image. This rest remains mine, whether I am by myself doing nothing or whether I am engaged in activity that is exterior or interior and mental. This is what I can tell you about my interior life: my condition is simple, naked, darkened and without knowledge even of God, in nakedness and darkness of spirit. I am lifted above every kind of illumination existing below this level; in this state I cannot bring into play my interior faculties. They are all without exception drawn and held under the influence of this unique and simple “image.” This image, in fact, holds them in a state of naked simplicity above vision and essence at the highest level of spirit, beyond spirit. It is there that I find myself in the nakedness and darkness of the all-incomprehensible depths, incomprehensible because of their darkness, where everything of the senses, everything specific and created melts down and blend into the unity of spirit, or rather into the simplicity of essence or spirit."

"Love does not always choose the same dwelling place, it makes many exploits in men here below; It has its night, its day, and its many levels: only the one who has overall happiness is content. It moves, it suffers in God, its first cause and the unique happiness of the celestial Spirits; It is there that it is always equally enraptured, by the Seraphic love which is above all things."

"I have three homes here below, each very appealing: The Cross, Love, and the Sepulchre; all of them are to me as One, and raise me above nature, and above its wearisome hold."

"Tell me, my Life and my Spouse, this whole ineffable mystery, is it not rather for the admiration of the Seraphim, than for the expression of one like me, your spouse, who doesn’t know what to do about this, except to babble."

"In a word, frankly, I am in love with the love in my Spouse."

"I don’t want anything more than to be one of your spouses employed by you to announce that they languish for your love."

"Sing boldly, O spouses of a Bridegroom such as mine! you, I say, whom are my companions in this fate and enjoyment so happy as ours! Sing at my happy insistence as I will sing by yours, a new song containing endless praises of the infinitely excessive grandeur and love of our Bridegroom, coming to so admirably espouse us, to deiformly deify us of him and in him, and to make us oneself of oneself."

"What is all this? Let him conceive it if he can, express it if he knows how, if he desires to; if one can it is licit, but it is better to shut up as one should; because it is here that our intuitive joy, respectively and mutually in us both, speaks, not of this nor anything like it, but something infinitely other than this, by its profundity, and perpetual and ineffable silence."

"Of what sort is this truth in its accomplishment in us both, your spouses cannot lay their eyes on me without seeing that I am your cherished and unique bride, by the evident and manifest signs of your radiant and exuberant love, which manifestly flow from me to you, whether I perceive them or not, yet all my desire is to be perpetually within, hidden and known only to you who are my Bridegroom, my Life and my All."

"Aspiring then is an expression of love: a love so purely and radically expressed that it transcends all loves that are comprehensible by the senses, the reason or the intellect. By the impetuosity and force of the Spirit of God, it arrives at union with God, not by chance but by a sudden transformation of the spirit in God."

"Aspiration, practiced as a familiar, respectful and loving conversation with God, is such an excellent method, that, by means of it, one soon arrives at the summit of all perfection, and falls in love with Love."

"The way to attain love is to love. A less excellent love leads to a greater love, and a greater love in turn leads to the highest love, as well as to the most excellent and ultimate fruits of active love. Each of these degrees has its own theory and practice. All of them, especially the last degrees, possess a simple, exalted, and singular contemplation of the divine Object, which constantly exerts a powerful influence on the soul and ravishes it with delight."

"This love is so overpowering that the will alone enters the amorous bosom of love, where it savors an unutterable love beyond all understanding and expression. All the while, the dumbfounded intellect remains paralyzed at the gate."

"Such is the effect of love's flood rushing into its lovers. It sweeps them away, ravishes them, and swamps them in its waves. These people become love itself — its spirit, its divinity — insofar as it is possible for any creature in this life."

"The sight of the intuitive and ravishing Beauty of God holds her as if asleep in its delectable bosom...This state surpasses all human definition and comparison."

"This path is so delightful and delectable that anyone who knows it will lovingly travel it at his own cost and expense. Such happiness is beyond words."

"The worst of all human miseries is not to know God, not to feel Him, not to desire Him, not to taste Him."

"Whoever refuses to follow Christ in His poverty will never possess Him in the abundance of His graces and virtues in this life, nor in His glory in the next. To possess nothing and to be nothing is to be full of God."

"We cannot imagine what a great love the angels have for those who are truly chaste. They take such special care of them that the devils can harm them only with difficulty and from a distance."

"The obedience of those, purified in soul and body in the furnace of humiliation, is of infinite worth to God."

"Every soul, touched by God, feels and believes in the depths of its being that it is more sinful than all men together."

"The corruption of the world and of the worldliness is a consequence of the fact that men have no eye whatever for the majesty of God in and around themselves; therefore has God delivered them to the natural and brutal motions of their heart."

"The forgetting of all things and of one's self, combined with contemplation, makes a man divine"

"Love which is not humble is a devil."

"Desire, abide, suffer and die unknown for all time; this is true sanctity!"

"The heavenly Bridegroom allows small failings and common weaknesses in order to deliver his loved ones from pride."

"True solitude is in the soul. The soul has as its desert and homeland God Himself, the father and teacher of all souls"

"The more a person strives after God, the more earnest he will become--the les he will converse with men."

"Modesty enables physical deformity."

"No one can be a true mystic who is not thoroughly versed in the ways of nature. The more nature is attracted by spiritual favors, the more it is inclined to make itself the master of them. Nature always mingles its own spirit with the spirit of God. unless we keep a close watch over it, it will always remain so. Natures most subtle snare is to lead us to confuse what is licit with what is expedient. When we doubt the inspiration of an impulse, whether from grace or nature, we should picture a similar object which is without doubt acceptable to nature. If this representation pleases us, it is a sign that the first inclination also comes from nature and is consequently to be rejected."

"Whether great attraction and strong interior occupations are of nature or of grace can be known by the fact that they are accompanied by perfect rest or subtle disquiet."

"It is much more trying to be continually tormented by evil men than by devils."

"God takes such great pleasure in the sanctity of His saints that in the interests of a few, He often allows the whole Church to suffer great loss."

"Perfect contemplatives hear without astonishment all that the learned propound since they excel in a science transcending all understanding."

"Simplicity is the loving inclination of the soul elevated by God, Who efficaciously drawn it into His own heart. There He reduces all its faculties to unity of spirit, that it may live there, in a n abstract, simple and essential condition, without sensible desire to reason or think of order or disorder. It is continually lost in the eternity of God."

"Nothing ever astonishes the really simple person."

"Those who apply themselves more ardently to the practice of love, by that very face bring more devils upon their heads."

"If the visitations the soul receives are from God, it first feels fear, then gladness accompanied by a hunger and thirst for virtue. If they are from the devil, the soul at first feels gladness and thereafter remains in confusion and darkness. Whether the visitations be from God or from the devil, we should always despise and humiliate ourselves; God is exceedingly glad to visit the humble, but the devil cannot stomach them."

"The soul’s pleasure is to enter and to go forth: to enter into the profound abyss of God where it is irretrievably lost in the sight of his infinite grandeur and beauty which it contemplates continually with the eye of its understanding; and to go forth from there to the ravishing sight of our Savior, the God-Man, whom it is inspired to follow by a lively imitation both interiorly and exteriorly. p. 59"

"When the soul has been deeply touched, it is by love alone that it desires to be intimately joined to God. This is why we advocate reducing ardent aspiration to a few words, even to the mere word ‘love’. This love sends forth ardent and fiery flames with all its strength. As a result. A blazing divine fire is enkindled in the soul. It is in this way that God stirs up the soul and draws it strongly inward. p. 86"

"When you have acquired this excellent habit of love you will feel completely absorbed by it as it penetrates deeply into the center of your being. There you will be conscious of enjoying a taste and a gaze of such height, breadth, length, depth and simplicity that you will attain this state quite easily, without any effort on your part. p. 120"

"We have been created in order to return to God through love, through his own love. In us it must be ardent, pure and unceasingly active, so that we expend all our energies and are consumed by it. Actually, we shall never be able to do or give anything that can sufficiently recompense him who is infinite Love. Before him every creature is deceitful, and in comparison with him, man is nothing. p. 140"

"The method for practicing this ardent love is short and easy. Its subject is constant and loving aspiration. But to be perfect, aspiration must be practice so eagerly and continually that it becomes as easy as breathing. It has a number of degrees, all of which can be reduced to four. The first consists in offering oneself and all created things to God. As far as possible, this should be done in an abstract manner. The second degree consists in making requests of the divine Spouse, asking him for his gifts in him and for his own sake. The third degree consists in being resigned and completely conformed to him. This conformity is very lofty and perfect, and is characterized by a great love. Moreover, the soul also desires it for creatures who are capable of such exalted love. The fourth degree is that of unitive love which unites the soul to God. Here the souls yearns for him and pursues him with acts of love until he opens his loving and super essential bosom to it. Here it feast upon his immense beauty in great abundance and intoxication, eating and drinking at the table of the Blessed. But since this does not last very long, the soul soon returns to itself to feed upon its former spiritual fare. From this it derives renewed strength, until God again receives it into his bosom with the same effect."

"You are within, my Love, and I too am there with you and will be there constantly. No, I will never look for you outside, for you are not there. Rather will I retire into the deepest center of my being, where I shall possess you in a singular repose and delight. IN this simple union, we shall take the greatest delight in each other. And I shall rejoice only in this: that you are my God. With this I am happy, completely satisfied that you are such, and that you will never be understood by any created being. p. 183"

"It is a wonder that any religious at all preserves a love for the true spirit of religious life in the midst of all these adversaries, and remains resolved to be really spiritual in spite of them and even of hell itself. Although their number is small, it does not matter. These few sparks will help to keep the religious state alive to God's honor and glory. p. 188"

"“God destined him to be the brightest flame in our little company as regards spiritual things. It is no exaggeration to say that in this respect he was the St. John of the Cross of the new reform.”"

"John of Saint Samson insists very strongly on the mystical vocation of Carmelites. The active life should not have first place. Recalling that the rule demands a life of prayer; he chooses this prayer — "to be lost in the object of contemplation, God and the things of God." No doubt it is necessary to preach, study and work, but because of the dangers which exterior activity brings, it is necessary for young scholastics to exercise themselves intensely in the principal object of their vocation and establish themselves solidly in the practice of meditation and contemplation. Contemplation is still a pure gift of God; but it is important that we for our part remove all the obstacles and practice the virtues so that we may be found disposed in the way which God demands before giving his mystical favors. In this doctrine, human activity enjoys a considerable part; in its higher degrees, contemplation remains an absolutely gratuitous gift. Thus equilibrium is maintained between the school of acquired contemplation and that of infused contemplation. John is careful to note that perfection does not consist in ecstatic phenomena but in union with God who lives in us. This fire, which burns in us, sets us aflame, and the flame of our love is united to Divine Love which en flames our heart. It is necessary that Carmelites understand this vocation and prepare for it. As a means of arriving at the dispositions required by God, John counsels a form of prayer which the Francis can Henry Herp especially honored, namely, aspiration. It has four degrees: inhaling God, exhaling God, living in God, living by God. Entirely filled with God, we must hunger and thirst for God without ceasing and open our mouth to breathe God. We should start by offering ourselves and every creature to God."

"How do wealth- and capital-output ratios evolve in the long run, and why? Until recently it was difficult to properly address this question, for one simple reason: national accounts were mostly about flows, not stocks. Economists had at their disposal a large body of historical series on flows of output, income and consumption – but limited data on stocks of assets and liabilities. When needed, for example for growth accounting exercises, estimates of capital stocks were typically obtained by cumulating past flows of saving and investment. This is fine for some purposes, but severely limits the set of questions one can ask."

"I am trying to put the distributional question and the study of long-run trends back at the heart of economic analysis. In that sense, I am pursuing a tradition which was pioneered by the economists of the 19th century, including David Ricardo and Karl Marx. One key difference is that I have a lot more historical data. With the help of , , Facundo Alvaredo, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Gabriel Zucman and many other scholars, we have been able to collect a unique set of data covering three centuries and over 20 countries. This is by far the most extensive database available in regard to the historical evolution of income and wealth. This book proposes an interpretative synthesis based upon this collective data collection project."

"We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics."

"In many ways, the US led the world toward the development of progressive taxation and the reduction of inequality at the global level during the first half of the 20th century... Unfortunately, one century later, in 2019, the rise of inequality creates new threats to liberal democracies. It is time to take a new step and to develop new policy instruments, in line with the challenges raised by global wealth trends."

"The distribution of wealth is one of today’s most widely discussed and controversial issues. But what do we really know about its evolution over the long term? Do the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably lead to the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands, as Karl Marx believed in the nineteenth century? Or do the balancing forces of growth, competition, and technological progress lead in later stages of development to reduced inequality and greater harmony among the classes, as Simon Kuznets thought in the twentieth century? What do we really know about how wealth and income have evolved since the eighteenth century, and what lessons can we derive from that knowledge for the century now under way?"

"Modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have made it possible to avoid the Marxist apocalypse but have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality—or in any case not as much as one might have imagined in the optimistic decades following World War II."

"When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based."

"Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts – and that is a very good thing."

"Economists are all too often preoccupied with petty mathematical problems of interest only to themselves. This obsession with mathematics is an easy way of acquiring the appearance of scientificity without having to answer the far more complex questions posed by the world we live in."

"To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics."

"National income is defined as the sum of all income available to the residents of a given country in a given year, regardless of the legal classification of that income."

"Capital is defined as the sum total of nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market."

"I can now present the first fundamental law of capitalism, which links the capital stock to the flow of income from capital. The capital/income ratio β is related in a simple way to the share of income from capital in national income, denoted α. The formula is"

"Broadly speaking, the rise of the supermanager is largely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon."

"Whenever the rate of return on capital is significantly and durably higher than the growth rate of the economy, it is all but inevitable that inheritance (of fortunes accumulated in the past) predominates over saving (wealth accumulated in the present). ... The inequality r > g in one sense implies that the past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly, even without labor, than wealth stemming from work, which can be saved. Almost inevitably, this tends to give lasting disproportionate importance to inequalities created in the past, and therefore to inheritance."

"The overall importance of capital today, as noted, is not very different from what it was in the eighteenth century. Only its form has changed: capital was once mainly land but is now industrial, financial, and real estate. We also know that the concentration of wealth remains high, although it is noticeably less extreme than it was a century ago. The poorest half of the population still owns nothing, but there is now a patrimonial middle class that owns between a middle and a third of total wealth, and the wealthiest ten percent now own only-two thirds of what there is to own rather than nine-tenths."

"Let it be said at once: Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this."

"Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them."

"The tragedy is that Trump’s program will only strengthen the trend towards inequality."

"The main lesson for Europe and the world is clear: as a matter of urgency, globalization must be fundamentally re-oriented. The main challenges of our times are the rise in inequality and global warming. We must therefore implement international treaties enabling us to respond to these challenges and to promote a model for fair and sustainable development. Agreements of a new type can, if necessary, include measures aimed at facilitating these exchanges. But the question of liberalizing trade should no longer be the main focus. Trade must once again become a means in the service of higher ends. It never should have become anything other than that."

"There should be no more signing of international agreements that reduce customs duties and other commercial barriers without including quantified and binding measures to combat fiscal and climate dumping in those same treaties."

"Ceta, the EU-Canada free trade deal, should be rejected. It is a treaty which belongs to another age. This strictly commercial treaty contains absolutely no restrictive measures concerning fiscal or climate issues. It does, however, contain a considerable reference to the “protection of investors”. This enables multinationals to sue states under private arbitration courts, bypassing the public tribunals available to one and all. The legal supervision proposed is clearly inadequate, in particular concerning the key question of the remuneration of the arbitrators-cum-referees and will lead to all sorts of abuses. At the very time when American legal imperialism is gaining in strength and imposing its rules and its dues on our companies, this decline in public justice is an aberration. The priority, on the contrary, should be the construction of strong public authorities, with the creation of a prosecutor, including a European state prosecutor, capable of enforcing their decisions."

"A balanced treaty between Canada and Europe, aimed at promoting a partnership for fair and sustainable development, should begin by specifying the emission targets of each signatory and the practical commitments to achieve these."

"It is time to change the political discourse on globalization: trade is a good thing, but fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education systems. In turn, these themselves demand fair taxation systems. If we fail to deliver these, Trumpism will prevail."

"The right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty’s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling."

"Recently, prominent historians and economists, among them Walter Scheidel and Thomas Piketty, have argued persuasively that major wars can also act to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and that the experience of the nations involved in the First and Second World Wars bears this out. Major wars stimulate employment; labour becomes more valuable so wages and benefits go up; and the rich pay higher taxes voluntarily, or find it harder to avoid doing so. At the end of destructive wars it is also easier to contemplate major programmes of reconstruction and social benefits and gain support for them. As William Beveridge, whose report laid the foundations for the British welfare state, wrote, ‘Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolution, not for patching.’"

"Natural order was not invented by the human mind or set up by certain perceptive powers... The existence of order presupposes the existence of organizing intelligence. Such intelligence can be none other than God's."

"When we consider a human work, we believe we know where the "intelligence" which fashioned it comes from; but when a living being is concerned, no one knows or ever knew, neither Darwin nor Epicurus, neither Leibniz nor Aristotle, neither Einstein nor Parmenides. An act of faith is necessary to make us adopt one hypothesis rather than another. Science, which does not accept any credo, or in any case should not, acknowledges its ignorance, its inability to solve this problem which, we are certain, exists and has reality."

"The immanent purpose is an intrinsic property of living beings, without it, they would not exist. Consider the autonomous function units and their components: organs, tissues, isolated cells, as well as other properties such as nutrition, body defense, growth, reproduction, to which they are subject at the end. When it comes to these properties, biologists do not argue; but if you pronounce the word purpose, there is a public outcry. Probably because they do not distinguish the purpose of fact or immanent, the trascendental purpose. Of the latter, the biologist has little or nothing to say; it is a matter of metaphysics."

"Here we are, up to our ears in transcendence: Any organization or function is controlled by it. The building blocks for making living creatures are utilized by it. Thus, the entire world of living beings is transcended by phenomena that create finality. Natural selection working for the continuance and welfare of animals, plants, and man himself, is seen to be the grand law which organizes the living universe. So the Darwinians, who fancied they had exorcized finalism and transcendency but forgot to analyze critically the idea of natural selection, failed to see its implications or metaphysical consequences. They thought they were absolved from giving any finalization or deistic interpretation by decreeing that on earth all is but deceptive appearances; finality is a sham, guided evolution illusory. How is it possible to understand such an attitude?"

"The study of contemporary species does not establish the existence of evolution; it provides facts which support it, but which do not fully demonstrate its existence. This is understandable, since at present we cannot show the series of successive stages which make up evolution, but only a fleeting picture of evolution."

"We have gone from Darwinism into neo-Darwinism, and, very recently, to ultra-Darwinism, which not only claims to be the sole custodian truth in regard to evolution, but to be evolution itself. Darwin himself did not display so much confidence when writing to one of his grandsons... Present-day ultra-Darwinism, which is so sure of itself, impresses incompletely informed biologists, misleads them, and inspires fallacious interpretations. The following is one of the numerous examples found in books today: "In microorganisms, the generation time is rather short and the size of the population can be enormous. Therefore, mutation acts as a very powerful evolutionary process during a shorter lapse of time than in populations of higher organisms"(Levine, 1969, p. 196. the italics are mine) This text suggests that modern bacteria are evolving very quickly, thanks to their innumerable mutations. Now, this is not true. For millions, or even billions of years, bacteria have not transgressed the structural frame within which they have always fluctuated and still do. It is a fact that microbiologists can see in their cultures species of bacteria oscillating around an intermediate form, but this does not mean that two phenomena, which are quite distinct, should be confused; the variation of the genetic code because of a DNA copy error and evolution. To vary and to evolve are two different things; this can never be sufficiently emphasized."

"The mutation of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect."

"Through use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root in the very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and biologists, who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has been demonstrated, which is not the case. Wishing to point out this type of misconception, we quote P. T. Mora, an American biochemist, who writes about polysaccharides contained in the cell membrane: "Of course we know that such specific structure is the result of the working of enzymes, which in turn is a reflection of the genetic information transmitted by nucleic acids through cycles of reproduction as selected by evolution (Mora, 1965, p. 40, the italics are mine). To admit that the action of enzymes and, enzymes and, more important, that their foundation is directed by the genetic code should not permit one to mantain that the information was selected by evolution (the consequence is mistaken for the cause); no one knows anything about this."

"For those who would still doubt the relevance of our criticisms, another quote from a paper written by two American biologists, King and Jukes (1969), is presented: "Darwinism is so well established that it is difficult to think of evolution except in terms of selection for desirable characteristics and advantageous genes. New technical developments and new knowledge, such as the sequential analysis of proteins and the deciphering of the genetic code, have made a much closer examination of evolutionary processes the sequential analysis of proteins and the deciphering of the genetic code, have made a much closer examination of evolutionary processes possible, and therefore necessary.". These biologists are convinced that the Darwinian credo is correct, and they accept it. They are quite sincere but they are not critical enough. Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems. Heedful of genetics and demography, Darwinians have seldom taken fossils* into consideration, or, and this is more serious, they have applied the laws of genetics to them without making a critical analysis; considering our ignorance of the relationships between fossils, which in most cases are found very far apart and in distinct beds, this approach can only be arbitrary."

"The Darwinians have coined the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy to designate the finality which they at the same time deny. Appearances are deceptive, they say; the materials of life are always the work of chance. What some take for finality is only the result of the ordering of random materials bynatural selection. Even were this to be true, as it is not, the demon of finility would still not have been exorcized. For natural selection is, in essence and function, the supreme finilizing agent. Actually, the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy are the homage paid to finality, as hypocrisy pays homage to virtue. Giard (1905), himself a shrewd scholar but blinded by a foolish anticlericalism, went so far as to abjure Lamarckism and write, "To account for the wondrous adaptations such as those we observe between orchids and the insects that fertilize them, we have hardly any choice but the bare alternative hypotheses: the intervention of a sovereignly intelligent being, and selection." He cannot have seriously subjected his supposed dilemma to critical scrutiny or he would have seen that he was substituting for the dethroned divinity just such another, a sorting and finalizing, in sum transcendental, agent, natural selection. Paul Wintrebert, a convinced and even intractable atheist, did not fall into the same trap but realized perfectly that Giard's alternative involves, whatever opinion be held, recognizing the intervention of a purposive guiding agent. Giard's concept, which is that held by many atheists and "freethinkers", gives a singular and belittling idea of God. The Almighty, obliged to remodel and retouch His own handiwork."

"The philosopher considering the Universe in its entirety is led to admit that there is only one necessary, absolute being, God. All other beings are contingent; this is why Pascal said of himself: "I feel that I might not have been... therefore I am not a necessary being" (Pensées, No. 597). The proposition applies equally to every living thing."

"Exceptional, unforeseeable, or even inexplicable phenomena would hence be fortuitous. these very vague adjectives too often have a merely circumstancial meaning. A given phenomenon, today considered random, may tomorrow be considered determined because its causes will have been unraveled by thorough and specific study. Biologists, whose task is not to seek moral causes or intentions, must first of all make sure that so-called random facts really are random facts; they must constantly keep in mind Poincare's (1912b, p. 65) famous phrase: "Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.""

"Those skilled in mathematical analysis know that its object is not simply to calculate numbers, but that it is also employed to find the relations between magnitudes which cannot be expressed in numbers and between functions whose law is not capable of algebraic expression."

"The employment of mathematical symbols is perfectly natural when the relations between magnitudes are under discussion; and even if they are not rigorously necessary, it would hardly be reasonable to reject them, because they are not equally familiar to all readers and because they have sometimes been wrongly used, if they are able to facilitate the exposition of problems, to render it more concise, to open the way to more extended developments, and to avoid the digressions of vague argumentation."

"Anyone who understands algebraic notation, reads at a glance in an equation results reached arithmetically only with great labour and pains."

"In the act of exchange, as in the transmission of power by machinery, there is friction to be overcome, losses which must be borne, and limits which cannot be exceeded."

"So far we have studies how, for each commodity by itself, the law of demand in connection with the conditions of production of that commodity, determines the price of it and regulates the incomes of its producers. We considered as given and invariable the prices of other commodities and the incomes of other producers; but, in reality the economic system is a whole of which the parts are connected and react on each other. An increase in the incomes of the producers of commodity A will affect the demand for commodities Band C, etc., and the incomes of their producers, and, by its reaction will involve a change in the demand for A. It seems, therefore, as if, for a complete and rigorous solution of the problems relative to some parts of the economic system, it were indispensable to take the entire system into consideration. But this would surpass the powers of mathematical analysis and of our practical methods of calculation, even if the values of all the constants could be assigned to them numerically."

"There are many anticipators of marginal analysis. Three major names were Augustin Cournot (1801-1877), J. H. von Thünen (1783-1850), and H. H. Gossen (1810-1858). Cournot's originality and ingenuity can hardly be exaggerated. In 200 small pages, he described and defined the downward-sloping , completely analyzed the maximization of profit under conditions of monopoly, advanced an ingenious explanation of pricing, proved that equilibrium price occurred when equaled , and exactly defined the market from which we call perfect competition and he called "unlimited competition." And the book went unread."

"It took from a hundred to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years for the astronomy of Kepler to become the astronomy of Newton and Laplace, and for the mechanics of Galileo to become the mechanics of d'Alembert and Lagrange. On the other hand, less than a century has elapsed between the publication of Adam Smith’s work and the contributions of Cournot, Gossen, Jevons, and myself."

"Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent upon reason, has its well spring and source of power elsewhere, in something supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind has said that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of reason lead to nothing but affliction of the spirit. ...And in truth we wish to live."

"In 1823 he took a license degree in mathematics at Sorbonne University. He then became the private secretary of a field marshal who required assistance in writing his memoirs. This position must have left Cournot with considerable time for his own pursuits, for in the course of his ten years in the field marshal's employment he took two doctoral degrees, one in mechanics and one in astronomy. In addition, he published a number of articles and even acquired a degree in law."

"For the Greeks who believed in the immortality of the soul it may have been harder to accept the Christian preaching of the resurrection than it was for others. . . . The teaching of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato can in no way be brought into consonance [agreement] with that of the New Testament."

"Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body. . . . Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies."

"Because Jesus came, died, and was resurrected, O[ld] T[estament] festivals have now been fulfilled, and to maintain them ‘means reverting back to the old covenant, as if Christ had never come."

"There is a radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul. . . . Although Christianity later established a link between these two beliefs, and today the average Christian confuses them completely, I see no reason to hide what I and the majority of scholars consider to be the truth. . . . The life and thought of the New Testament are entirely dominated by faith in the resurrection. . . . The whole man, who is really dead, is brought back to life by a new creative act of God."

"The complex notion of the ‘provisional’ character of the State is the reason why the attitude of the first Christians toward the State is not unitary, but rather appears to be contradictory. I emphasize, that it appears to be so. We need only mention Romans 13:1, ‘Let every man be subject to the powers that be . . . ,’ alongside Revelation 13: the State as the beast from the abyss. In both instances, the same Roman state is spoken of."

"To superficial consideration, it might appear that in its relationship to the State Christianity simply took over the heritage of Judaism, and that the problem poses itself in exactly the same way here as there. Actually, however, the Jewish theocratic ideal is expressly rejected by Christianity as satanic—we need only recall the temptation stories in the Gospel. Satan offers to Christ the kingdoms of the world."

"The Gospel knows nothing of that confusion of the Kingdom of God with the State which is characteristic of the theocratic ideal of Judaism. On the contrary, it opposed the theocratic ideal of Judaism with the same sharpness with which it resisted the totalitarian claims of the Roman State."

"The Zealots ... want to initiate a holy war and to establish within a human framework a Kingdom of God which is an earthly kingdom and which at the same time takes the place of the Roman Empire. Jesus sees that use of this method places one on exactly the same plane as every other totalitarian State. This is also an abandonment of the New Testament expectation of a kingdom which is really God's, and not a human kingdom. If the Zealots succeed in realising their ideal, it will be a totalitarian State of the most extreme form; one making divine claims."

"I dislike those who present myself as a Protestant philosopher; I am a philosopher and a Protestant."

"If we go back to the intention [Marx, Nietzsche and Freud] had in common, we find in it the decision to look upon the whole of consciousness primarily as "false" consciousness."

"The possibility of noncongruence, of discrepancy, in many ways already presupposes that individuals as well as collective entities are related to their own lives and to social reality not only in the mode of participation without distance but precisely in the mode of noncongruence. ... The presupposition here is precisely that of a social imagination, operating in both constructive and destructive ways, as both confirmation and contestation of the present situation."

"People do things, and then they imagine what they are doing in a kind of cloudy realm. Thus we say first there is a social reality in which people fight to earn their living, and so on, and this is real reality, as praxis. This reality is then represented in the heaven of ideas, but it is falsely represented as having a meaning autonomous to this realm, as making sense on the basis of things which can be thought and not done or lived. The claim against ideology therefore comes from a kind of realism of life, a realism of practical life for which praxis is the alternative concept to ideology. Marx's system is materialist precisely in its insistence that the materiality of praxis precedes the ideality of ideas."

"The "hermeneutics of suspicion" is a phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. In spite of their obvious differences, he argued, these thinkers jointly constitute a "school of suspicion." That is to say, they share a commitment to unmasking "the lies and illusions of consciousness;" they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths (Ricoeur 356). Ricoeur’s term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields[.]"

"In 1965, French philosopher Paul Ricœur called Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud the three “maîtres du soupçon,” the “masters of suspicion” that made us regard the conscience as something suspect. Because of these three ideologues, many no longer trust their conscience. They are no longer sure that it is the innate voice of God or human nature. What if the “masters of suspicion” were right, and what we call the voice of conscience is in fact the voice of those who want to deny us the right to revolution, to power, and to pleasure, who have instilled in us their pseudo-values and taught us to call them conscience?"

"Ricoeur distinguishes between two forms of hermeneutics: a hermeneutics of faith which aims to restore meaning to a text and a hermeneutics of suspicion which attempts to decode meanings that are disguised."

"Paul Ricœur speaks of the theologian as a hermeneut, whose task is to interpret the multivalent, rich metaphors arising from the symbolic bases of tradition so that the symbols may 'speak' once again to our existential situation."

"French philosopher Paul Ricœur (1913–2005), in his book “De l’interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud,” published in 1965, coined the expression “school of suspicion” to describe the collective cultural aim of such famous authors as Karl Marx (1818–1883), Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). While proclaiming very different and even opposite philosophies, in Ricœur’s view the ultimate attempt of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche was to teach that reality itself cannot be trusted and fundamentally lies, and that all existing authorities are false. As “masters” (or teachers) “of suspicion,” their credo was not the legitimate critique of existing authorities for their mistakes and misdeeds, but the basic delegitimization of the very concept of authority in itself."

"I invite you to discover more such recent findings. It is unfortunate that India doesn’t accord archaeology the prestige it deserves, especially among young Indians. We must restore that prestige and fascination and make the discipline attractive so our heritage may be explored and rediscovered before it gets completely erased."

"The Hindu mind works in such a way that continuity of worship is more important than physical fact. When the Harappans migrated eastward towards the Gangetic region, they carried with them their memories of the Sarasvati. The myths and sanctity were transferred to Prayag."

"When I was 15 or so, I stumbled on literature related to Indian spirituality, and instantly felt that there was something that held essential keys. I read several of the great masters, something of India's ancient literature, and finally decided that Sri Aurobindo's view of life and the world was what I was looking for. It was not a passing craze or a 'New Age' fad; it not only satisfied the intellect but also touched the core of the being."

"If in the nineteenth century most scholars identified the Ghaggar-Hakra's course with the Vedic Sarasvati, it is basically for three reasons. The Rig-Veda, the oldest of the four Vedas, mentions various rivers but praises the Sarasvati above all others: it was a "mighty river" flowing "from the mountain to the sea", and one hymn listed it between the Yamuna and the Sutlej - precisely the location of the Ghaggar-Hakra. Secondly, the local traditions regarding the "lost river" of the Indian desert matched those in the post-Vedic literature (including the Mahabharata), which recorded the gradual disappearance of the Sarasvati. Thirdly, scholars noticed a minor tributary of the Ghaggar called "Sarsuti", an obvious corruption of "Sarasvati": it rises in the Sirmur hills that are part of the Shivaliks and was marked on British maps as early as in 1788. Putting these three lines of evidence together, they concluded that the lost Sarasvati could only have flowed in the Ghaggar's bed."

"Aryabhata conceived the earth as a rotating sphere in space, which causes the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Varahamihira disagreed and Brahmagupta derided Aryabhata — but unlike medieval Europe, the intellectual climate in India was free and tolerant of dissent."

"Michel Danino reviewed nine genetic studies using large samples from 1999 to 2006 and conclusively found no evidence of invasion. ‘Just like the imaginary Aryan invasion or migration left no trace in Indian literature, in the archaeological and anthropological record, it is invisible at the genetic level…genetics is joining other disciplines in helping clean the cobwebs of colonial historiography. If some have a vested interest in patching together the said cobwebs, so they may keep cluttering our history textbooks, they are only delaying the inevitable.’"

"I will, therefore, take a middle path and propose that the Shivalik landscape was such that only a portion of the Yamunā-Tons ran westward into the Markanda Valley, with the rest flowing southward through a smaller and higher opening than today’s ‘Yamuna tear’. The westward branch was the Sarasvatī (which would explain why the Markanda does not appear in the Rig Veda), while the southward was the Yamunā. When it touched the plains, the Yamunā divided once more, as Cunningham and R.D. Oldham proposed, and others after them: because its terraces occupied a higher level than today, part of the river flowed southwest, joining minor streams to form the Drishadvatī of old. In the plains, the Yamunā was thus a double river—which would conveniently explain the root meaning of the word yamunā: ‘twin’."

"Philosophy always buries its undertakers."

"What is most apparent and constant in Thomas' personality, the image he most likely had of himself, is the teacher. The saint was essentially a Doctor of the Church; the man was a teacher of theology and philosophy; the mystic never entirely separated his meditations from his teaching, which drew its inspiration from them."

"We can only choose between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative."

"Thomas considers that a religious may legitimately aspire to the title and functions of master, but since he could only teach divine things, it is only in relation to the science of divine things that secular sciences can legitimately interest him. This is demanded by the very essence of the contemplative life, the teaching of which is nothing but its immediate extension into the order of the active life."

"What, then, will this philosophy be? Thomas only employed it for the service it renders Christian wisdom. No doubt this is why he never thought of separating it from this wisdom and giving it a name. He probably did not foresee that the day would come when people would go through his works to extract the elements of a philosophy from his theology. He himself never attempted this synthesis."

"The mathematician always proceeds from thought to being or things. Consequently, critical idealism was born the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method must henceforth be the method for metaphysics."

"Indeed, all idealism derives from Descartes, or from Kant, or from both together, and whatever other distinguishing features a system may have, it is idealist to the extent that, either in itself, or as far as we are concerned, it makes knowing the condition of being."

"With Descartes the Cogito ergo sum [I think, therefore I am] turns into Cogito ergo res sunt [I think, therefore things are]."

"As used today, the word realism means in the first place the opposite to idealism when it claims that it is possible to pass from the subject to the object."

"Reality can be grasped at levels of different depths. It is immediately given to us in a kind of block form, which is simply the "apprehended reality"."

"While Descartes finds being in thought, Saint Thomas finds thought in being."

"Up to Descartes' time, and particularly during the Middle Ages, it had always been agreed that philosophy consisted in a transposition of reality into conceptual terms"

"Having left us with thought (not a soul), and extension (not a body), [Descartes] does not know how to account for the union of soul and body."

"Having expelled quality from the field of extension, [idealists] do not know how to account for it when it reappears in thought."

"Hume's skepticism, therefore, descends in a direct line from Cartesian mathematicism."

"If there is a single initial error at the root of all the difficulties philosophy is involved in, it can only be the one Descartes committed when he decreed, a priori, that the method of one of the sciences of reality was valid for the whole of reality."

"The scientific sterility of the Middle Ages has to be condemned for the same reasons which make it necessary today to condemn the philosophic sterility of scientism."

"If there is something more in a living being than a pure mechanism, Descartes is bound in advance to miss it."

"Most of our contemporaries think that, at bottom, being a philosopher and adopting an idealist method are one and the same thing."

"I maintain, therefore, that just as there is in Cartesianism a methodical idealism, the kind that starts with nosse [knowing], there can be a methodical realism, the kind that starts with esse [being]."

"Every given reality implies the thought which apprehends it. Therefore being is the condition of knowing; knowing is not the condition of being."

"The realist method starts with the whole in order to distinguish the parts."

"All realism derives from the analysis of knowledge; all idealism derives from the analysis of a thought."

"Gilson criticizes attempts to trace Dante's position back to Thomism or Averroism. For St. Thomas, every hierarchy of dignity is at the same time a hierarchy of jurisdiction, while for Dante—except for God—a hierarchy of dignity is never the foundation of a hierarchy of jurisdiction, and this corresponds to Dante's specific philosophical problem, which is not so much to define the essence of philosophy as to determine functions and jurisdictions. The principle governing this determination is absolutely irreconcilable with Thomism. St. Thomas knows only one ultimate end: eternal bliss, which can only be attained through the Church; moreover, the spirituality of the ultimate end implies that between temporal and spiritual power there is a hierarchical subordination of the means to the end. For Dante, on the other hand, man can obtain, through the exercise of political virtues, a human happiness completely distinct from heavenly bliss, even if the latter represents a higher end. The thesis of the “duo ultima” legitimizes the complete distinction between the political order and the religious order, which is equally universal to that of the Church, but autonomous and pursuing an end of earthly happiness."

"It is not that Dante intends to combat the cupiditas of the clergy in order to save the autonomy of the State; rather, “it is the struggle against cupiditas, the need to thoroughly permeate public life with religion, that leads him to distinguish between the orders.” In other words, the central point of his thinking, which leads him to overcome both Guelphism and Ghibellinism, is "the intuition of the concordance between the affirmation of the autonomy of the Empire, hitherto supported by heterodox thinkers, and that of the purification of the Church affirmed by spiritual writers," which is in line with what the best interpreter of Dante's philosophy, Étienne Gilson, defines as the singular and unique feature of his thought, irreducible to any source."

"A third equivalent of duty is borrowed from sensibility and not, like the preceding, from intelligence and activity. It’s the growing fusion of sensibilities, and the ever increasing sociable character of elevated pleasures, from which results a kind of duty or superior necessity which pushes us naturally and rationally towards others. By virtue of evolution, our pleasures grow and become increasingly impersonal; we cannot experience enjoyment within our selves as if on a deserted isle. Our milieu, to which we better adapt ourselves every day, is human society, and we can no more be happy outside of this milieu than we can breathe outside the air. The purely selfish happiness of certain Epicureans is a chimera, an abstraction, an impossibility; the true human pleasures are all more or less social. Pure egoism, rather than being an affirmation of the self, is a mutilation of the self."

"A child saw a butterfly poised on a blade of grass; the butterfly had been made numb by the north wind. The child plucked the blade of grass, and the living flower that was at its tip, still numb, remained attached. He returned home, holding his find in his hand. A ray of sunlight broke through, striking the butterfly’s wing, and suddenly, revived and light, the living flower flew away into the glare. All of us, scholars and workers, we are like the butterfly: our strength is made of a ray of light. Not even: of the hope of a ray. One must thus know how to hope; hope is what carries us higher and farther. “But it’s an illusion!” What do you know of this? Should we not take a step for fear that one day the earth will slide away from under our feet? Looking far into the past or the future is not the only thing; one must look into oneself. One must see there the living forces that demand to be expended, and we must act."

"We can judge ourselves and our ideal by posing this question: For what idea, for what person would I be ready to risk my life? He who cannot answer such a question has a vulgar and empty heart. He is incapable of feeling or doing anything grand in life, since he is unable to go beyond his individuality. He is impotent and sterile, dragging along his selfish ego like the tortoise its shell. On the contrary, he who has present in his spirit the idea of death for his ideal seeks to maintain this ideal at the height of this possible sacrifice. He draws from this supreme risk a constant tension and an indefatigable energy of the will. The only means of being great in life is having the consciousness that you will not retreat before death."

"Guyau places at the basis of his ethics the conception of life in the broadest sense of the word. Life manifests itself in growth, in multiplication, in spreading. Ethics, according to Guyau, should be a teaching about the means through which Nature's special aim is attained, -the growth and the development of life. The moral element in man needs, therefore, no coercion, no compulsory obligation, no sanction from above; it develops in us by virtue of the very need of man to live a full, intensive, productive life. Man is not content with ordinary, commonplace existence; he seeks the opportunity to extend its limits, to accelerate its tempo, to fill it with varied impressions and emotional experiences. And as long as he feels in himself the ability to attain this end he will not wait for any coercion or command from without. "Duty," says Guyau, is "the consciousness of a certain inward power, by nature superior to all other powers. To feel inwardly the greatest that one is capable of doing is really the first consciousness of what it is one's duty to do.""

"To know that a human being truly is, he must be examined in the arena where he most fully realizes his nature, thus where he is most truly himself. Excellence (arete) is the object of ethics. Anthropology is therefore inseparable from ethics."

"If we look at the parpens piled up on the building site or at the block of bronze, nothing about them manifests that they are suited to being a house or a statue. ... Aristotle speaks of the materials considered as such in terms of "the buildable" (I, 201a 16, b Bf), coining an adjective whose suffix expresses capacity (what he calls dunamis). This capacity, as we have seen, cannot be grasped after the manner of that with which perception provides us (color, hardness, etc.); it requires a gaze capable of probing more deeply, of proceeding from the real to the possible—as when Michelangelo "sees" a David in the formless block abandoned by other sculptors."

"What we've lost - 'I said in more or less these terms' - is the proper interest in and taste for detail. We've been noting that for a long time yet the loss is irremediable. In the old days man was everything. A human face was worth a poem. When nature appeared behind a human being it was a kind of backdrop taking the place of the dark background of portrait painters or the gold of the Italian primitives.. .The day when a separation took place art was diminished. It was transformed the day that the 'subject' and the 'genre' destroyed great painting, denaturing even landscapes."

"..Africa: it's a magic word that lends itselfs to suppositions and sets amateur explorers to dreaming. I want to try to be 'at home' on this bit of foreign [Arab] soil."

"The things I haven't seen with my own eyes are for me unknown."

"Interpreting the Orient through the arts would destroy it, the artistic exploitation might eventually prove as harmful as military or political adventurism."

"..that zone of consciousness through which all artists travel mentally, before ever approaching the easel."

"..an entirely original painter [ Francois Millet ], high-minded and genuinely rustic in nature, who has expressed things about the country and its inhabitants, about their toil, their melancholy, and the nobleness of their labour. He has represented them in a somewhat barbaric fashion, in a manner to which his ideas gave a more expressive force than his hand possessed. The world has been grateful for his intentions; it has recognised in his methods something of the sensibility of a Burns who was a little awkward in expression.. ..He stands out as a deep thinker."

"..the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well [characterised by] the total absence of what today we call 'a subject'."

"What motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture? None. And notice that he never asked for one. A peasant with a drunken red nose looks at you with his heavy eye and laughs with open mouth showing his teeth, raising a jug; if it is well painted, it has its value."

"The art of painting is only the art of expressing the invisible by the visible. Whether its roads be great or small, they are sown with problems which it is permitted to sound for one's self as truth, but which it is well to leave in their darkness as mysteries."

"Fromentin was more of a colorist with pen in hand but brush."

"The Algerians of Fromentin are much more real Arabs than those of his artist colleagues."

"Thus the human element in the Old Testament is seen to be quite considerable. It is not difficult to understand why from version to version, and translation to translation, with all the corrections inevitably resulting, it was possible for the original text to have been transformed during the course of more than two thousand years."

"Why should we be surprised at this when we know that, for Islam, religion and science have always been considered the twin sisters? From the very beginning Islam directed people to cultivate science; the application of this precept brought with it the prodigious strides in science taken during the great era of Islamic civilization, from which, before the Renaissance, the West itself benefited."

"There is no compulsion for man to accept the truth. But it is certainly a shame upon the human intellect when man is not even interested in finding out as to what is the truth! Islam teaches that Go"

"I wanted to make it quite clear in the very beginning that even before I learnt the first letter of Bismillah, I was convinced that God was unique and all- powerful and when God guided me to undertake a study of the Quran, my inner soul cried out that Al- Quran was the Word of God revealed to his Last Prophet Mohammed (S.A.W.). In my book "Quran, Bible and Science," I have mentioned these facts and the book has met with instant success in the entire Christian world. In this book I have devoted myself to discuss all problems from purely academic angle, rather than that of faith or belief which would have revealed only my personal convictions. This was because I desired to be treated by the world as an academician rather than a theologian. About my faith and belief, God knows what is in one's heart. I am convinced that if I identify myself with any creed, people will invariably dub me as one belonging to such and such group and feel that whatever I say or do, I do so from only the angle of such and such creed group. I know my fellow beings very well and understand their mentality only too well. I wanted to assure them that all my pronouncements are based on scientific knowledge and not on any religious dogmas. https://islamicbulletin.org/en/newsletters/IB_6/10/index.html"

"Here below, God is the feeblest and most destitute of beings; his love, unlike that of idols, does not fill the carnal part of the soul."

"The hero wears armor, the saint is naked."

"Do not run or fly away in order to become free. Rather, go deeply into the narrow space given you. There you will find God and all things."

"The great majority of readers and hearers are the same all over the world. I have no doubt that the people of your country are like those I have met in China and India, and these latter were just like Tibetans. If you speak to them of profound Truths they yawn, and, if they dare, they leave you, but if you tell them absurd fables they are all eyes and ears."

"The attainment of transcendent insight is the real object of the training advocated in the traditional Oral Teachings, which do not consist, as so many imagine, in teaching certain things to the pupil, in revealing to him certain secrets, but rather in showing him the means to learn them and discover them for himself."

"Probably he will vanish like a mirage, with his caparisoned little steed and his party of followers, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. He is a part of the enchantment in which I have lived these last fifteen days. This new episode is of the stuff that dreams are made of. In a few minutes, I shall wake up in a real bed, in some country not haunted by geni nor by "incarnated Lamas" wrapped in shimmering silk. A country where men wear ugly dark coats and the horses do not carry silver inlaid saddles on golden-yellow cloths."

"Orthodox Buddhism strictly forbids religious rites, and the learned lamas acknowledge that they cannot bestow spiritual enlightenment, which can only be acquired by personal intellectual effort. Yet the majority believe in the efficacy of certain ritualistic methods of the healing of the sick, securing material prosperity, the conquest of evil beings and the guidance of the spirits of the dead in the other world."

"Gradually hostile forces seemed to gather around me. I seemed to be obsessed by invisible beings who incited me to leave the country, insinuating that I should be able to advance no farther, either in my study of Lamaism or upon the actual soil of Tibet. By a sort of clairvoyance at the same time, I saw these unknown enemies triumphant and rejoicing, after my departure, at having driven me away."

"I, one day, asked him: What is the Supreme Deliverance? He answered: It is the absence of all views and all imagination, the cessation of that mental activity which creates illusions. Another day, he said: You should go to Tibet and be initiated by a master of the 'Short Path.' ...I foresee that you would be capable of grasping the secret teaching."

"Nine hundred feet below my cave rhododendrons blossomed. I climbed barren mountain-tops. Long tramps led me to desolate valleys studded with translucent lakes... Solitude, solitude! ...Mind and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up of continual observations and reflections. Does one become a visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?"

"Sadly, almost with terror, I often looked at the threadlike path which I saw, lower down, winding in the valleys and disappearing between the mountains. The day would come when it would lead me back to the sorrowful world that existed beyond the distant hill ranges, and so thinking, an indescribable suffering lay hold of me."

"I go to Korea. Panya-an; the "monastery of wisdom" concealed in the heart of the forest opens its door to me. When I went there to beg temporary admittance, heavy rains had washed the path away. I found the Panya-an monks busy repairing it. The novice sent by his abbot to introduce me stopped before one of the workers as muddy as his companions, bowed respectfully and said a few words to him. The digger, leaning on his spade, looked at me intently for a while, then nodded his consent and began to work again, without taking any more notice of me. He is the head of the hermitage, my guide told me. He is willing to give you a room."

"Silence was not compulsory as it is amongst the Trappist, but the monks seldom spoke. They did not feel the need of talking nor of spending their energy in outward manifestations. Their thoughts remained fixed on secret introspections and their eyes had the inward gaze of the Buddha's images."

"There are a larger number than one would suppose who, when raising a small lamp in the gesture of an offering before the Buddha's image, ask for no more than spiritual insight. Though they may make but little practical effort to reach it, the mystic ideal of salvation through enlightenment remains alive amongst Tibetans."

"Whatever may be the causes at work, telepathic transmissions, either conscious or unconscious, seem to occur rather frequently in Tibet. Regarding my own experience, I am certain that I did receive on several occasions telepathic messages from lamas under whom I had practiced mental or psychic training. It may even be that the number of these messages has been larger than I suspect. However, I have only retained a few cases in which the lama afterwards inquired if I had understood what he meant to tell at a given time."

"Even the monks attached to morality acknowledge that a virtuous life and the monastic discipline, though of great value and advisable for the many, are but a mere preparation to a higher path. As for the adepts of the second system, they all believe in the beneficial results of a faithful adherence to the moral laws and the rules laid down for members of the religious Order."

"Moreover, all are unanimous in declaring the first method the safer of the two. A pure life, the performance of good deeds, righteousness, compassion, detachment from worldly cares, selflessness and quietness of mind act – they say – as a cleansing process which gradually removes the impure dust that covers the mental eyes,"

"As for the method which mystics call the Short Path, the Direct Path, it is considered as most hazardous. It is – according to the masters who teach it – as if instead of following the road which goes round a mountain ascending gradually towards its summit, one attempted to reach it in straight line, climbing perpendicular rocks and crossing chasms on a rope. Only first rate equilibrists, exceptional athletes, completely free from giddiness, can hope to succeed in such a task. Even the fittest may fear sudden exhaustion or dizziness. And there inevitably follows a dreadful fall in which the too presumptuous alpinist breaks his bones."

"That same day a little before dusk the young man appeared in the valley with his caravan. He wore the very same dress and the foreign sun hat which I had seen in my dream, and in the morning vision."

"To discuss this legitimacy is not always easy. The Buddha insisted strongly on the necessity of examining the propositions put forward by Him, and of understanding them personally before accepting them as true. The ancient texts leave no doubt on this point: Do not believe on the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe on the strength of sages of old times; do not believe that which you have yourselves imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or of priests. After investigation. believe that which you have yourselves tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others. p. 9"

"It is evident that the great majority of those who call themselves Buddhists have not been able to rise to the mental level of the Teaching of the Buddha. Most of them have built up for their own use various kinds of Buddhism which are anything but Buddhist and, in their ignorance, they uphold, often with bitterness, their belief and their absurd practices as the expression of the purest orthodoxy. p. 9"

"The object of these teachings is not to amuse the simple-minded, those charitably called in the Tibetan Scriptures the "children", it is meant for the strong to make them stronger, for the intelligent to make them more intelligent, for the shrewd to develop their shrewdness and to lead them to the possession of transcendent insight (lhag thong) which constitutes the real enlightenment. p. 11"

"The Masters of the secret teachings say that the truth learned from another is of no value, and that the only truth which is living and effective, which is of value, is the truth which we ourselves discover. p. 13"

"Literally, lhag thong, means to see more, to see beyond, to see extremely, supremely. Thus, not only to see more than that which is seen by the mass of mankind who are crassly ignorant, but to see beyond the bounds limiting the vision of cultivated minds, to bring into being the third eye of Knowledge which the adepts of tantric sects place in the center of the forehead of their symbolic Gods. p. 14"

"The faith commended to their faithful by all religions, and considered by them as a virtue essential for him who hopes for eternal salvation, is nowise approved in the Secret Teachings. Based on the advice given by the Buddha to His disciples, the primary recommendation that the Masters give to neophytes is: Doubt! Doubt is an incitement to research, and research is the Way which leads to Knowledge. p. 15"

"For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the I-told-you-so-book, because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings.... Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title, The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far been written."

"1889 also marks the first of Alexandra’s so-called neurasthenic crises... Alexandra... attempted to emancipate herself from what she deemed unworthy passions and habits. She claimed to have seen the banality of most human pleasures... To her diary... she confided that she could not believe in romantic love, which would only lead to infidelity, betrayal, and a broken heart."

"She predicted, wrongly, that she would die young... Without warning, a demonic voice would whisper in her ear that she could put a quick end to her troubles. She knew she mustn’t let it triumph. I belong to a new breed, she would reply. We are few in number but we will accomplish our mission. I am doing what I must."

"Of her several shorter efforts, “Women in Tibet” (Asia 1934) was an unmitigated triumph... female readers from countries as far apart as America and China were writing to her craving more information. The piece analyzed the means by which Tibetan women mastered a harsh environment and gained sway over their men. The women had achieved a de facto equality despite law and scripture unfavorable to them, this by virtue of innate independence and physical stamina. Tibetan women were clever and brave and therefore valued by their husbands."

"The tenor of the article showed that David-Neel remained a firm feminist—no less than during the period when she had crusaded for the legal rights of housewives and unwed mothers, still more for their economic independence."

"Whether one looks at Alexandra David-Néel the adventurer and explorer, the anthropologist, the scholar or the writer, her life is a testimony of an exceptional and highly gifted individual who stopped at nothing to achieve her aims, and in the process left behind a legacy of books, both entertaining and scholarly, that many successive generations will be able to study and enjoy. Although she was not known to have been officially affiliated with any specific occult group in the West, any esoteric school that cares to investigate or research her books as regards the world of the occult could only benefit thereby."

"In 1891, when she was twenty-three, David-Néel had an unexpected, but most timely windfall. Her English friend, Elisabeth Morgan... left David-Néel a small inheritance... enough to allow David-Néel to travel for more than a year through Ceylon and India. On this first of her major trips to Asia, David-Néel was reunited with Annie Besant, who was now the President of the Theosophical Society, with its headquarters in Adyar, near Madras, in India. During her stay there she studied Sanskrit with them, and then moved on to the holy city of Benares on the Ganges. Here she studied yoga with the famous guru, Swami Bhaskarananda of Varanasi... It was also in India where she first heard Tibetan music, which fascinated her. She was however, compelled to return to Brussels when her money ran out."

"At the age of 16 she was already running away from home for jaunts across Europe, and she traveled to India at 21... It was not until middle age that she married... in 1910 he (her husband) offered her a “long voyage”—he meant something like a year—to “get it out of her system.” She was gone for fourteen years, traveling and living in India, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Japan, making forays into the forbidden kingdom of Tibet."

"It was when she moved to Sikkim that she met three people who were to influence her life profoundly... This was the beginning of the most important and fulfilling period of David-Néel’s life. She actually underwent a physical transformation, the “neurasthenic,” somewhat unhealthy woman suddenly growing well and looking years younger....Her state of health improved enormously above a certain altitude —but it also seems significant that David-Néel, who until then had been isolated from other Buddhists, was suddenly living in a place where she received support for her practice."

"When the Dalai Lama asked her how she could have become a Buddhist without a teacher, she said, When I adopted the principles of Buddhism, I knew not a single Buddhist, and was perhaps the only Buddhist in Paris. During their first conversation, the Gomchen of Lachen remarked, You have seen the ultimate and supreme light. It isn’t in a year or two of meditation that one arrives at the concepts you express."

"To the Tibetans, it seemed perfectly logical for Alexandra David-Néel to have traveled to Lhasa: she was returning to the site of a previous incarnation."

"In other words, Indian Muslims did not aim to blend into an Indian nation, but to fight within the Indian context alongside other communities to achieve the right to live freely, that is, following the rules of their religion and law (the sharia). Peter Hardy concluded from this, “In 1920–2 Abdul Kalam Azad and the Jamiyat were advocating the mental partition of India”."

"Spokesmen for the Muslim elite invited the British to weigh quantitative criteria against qualitative aspects that could only argue in favour of the heirs to the Mughal Empire. This rhetoric in defence of Muslims was coupled with a sort of thinly veiled threat: not only were the Muslims superior in quality and heirs to a rich history, but they also wielded an influence that they could use against the British if necessary."

"Violence broke out on 27 February in Godhra, a district headquarters in eastern Gujarat. Fifty-seven Hindus were killed, including 25 women and 14 children, who were burned alive aboard the Sabarmati Express... Those who were originally from Gujarat and were returning home aboard the Sabarmati Express had gathered together in a few coaches. They chanted Hindu nationalist songs and slogans throughout the entire voyage, all the while harassing Muslim passengers. One family was even made to get off the train for refusing to utter the kar sevaks' war cry: “Jai Shri Ram!” (Glory to Lord Ram!). More abuse occurred at the stop in Godhra: a Muslim shopkeeper was also ordered to shout “Jai Shri Ram!” He refused, and was assaulted until the kar sevaks turned on a Muslim woman with her two daughters. One of them was forced to board the train before it started going again... The anti-Hindu riot was thus a reaction to provocation from Hindu nationalist activists. The aftermath of the events clearly showed that the violence reached unprecedented proportions precisely because of the political strategy these Hindu nationalists employ."

"In 1924 the Dalits of Vaikham in the state of Travancore launched a satyagraha to gain access to a local temple, or at least to use the road adjacent to the temple. Gandhi supported this mobilisation and went to Vaikham, but his dialogue with the local priests did not bear fruit. The latter rejected all his compromise proposals and their arguments prompted him to re-examine his position about Untouchability . . . He lost interest in the Vaikham movement and in various public meetings later declared himself to be a sanatanist, that is a follower of the Sanatana Dharma, the ‘eternal religion’ according to the orthodox Hindus."

"For Phule, Jesus Christ epitomises equality and fraternity. He also regards him as the spokesman for the poor. . . . Through the vernacularisation of Christian values and symbols, Phule endowed people with a new, positive identity."

"Jobless plebeians joined Bajrang Dal and other similar lumpen organisations and started to get a sense of identity by fighting for the cow."

"The Hindutva of Savarkar was conceived primarily as an ethnic community possessing a territory and sharing the same racial and cultural characteristics, three attributes which stemmed from the mythical reconstruction of the Vedic Golden Age."

"During that period, the French scholar Christophe Jafferlot was instrumental in providing significant amounts of atrocity literature about the 2002 Gujarat riots, which then flooded the Western media."

"The French researcher Christophe Jaffrelot, who is one of those experts who have uncritically swallowed quite a bit of secularist lore about the Hindu movement from their Indian guides, is very popular in Indian secularist circles. [...] Christophe Jaffrelot is also one of several French India-watchers who have exerted pressure on the French daily Le Figaro to fire its (allegedly pro-Hindu) India correspondent Francois Gautier.. This stamps him a fine member of the select club of opinion hegemons who prefer to enforce their hegemony by silencing dissidents rather than facing them in debate."

"Jaffrelot consistently portrays Hinduism and Hindu social leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi, as caste-biased. Gandhi is portrayed as someone who compromised himself in his fight against untouchability and backtracked to an orthodox Hindu identity. .... Jaffrelot measures the positive qualities of any social reformer by how much he distanced himself from Hindu society. ...While Jaffrelot resorts to convoluted ways to invent racism in the Hindu polity, he develops a blind eye to the racism prevalent in the forging of Dravidian identity.. He eulogizes E.V. Ramasami as an ‘egalitarian in a western individualist vein’. Jaffrelot completely glosses over the fact that Kudi Arasu , the official journal of Ramasami's movement, praises Hitler explicitly and draws parallels between Jews and Brahmins.... He praises the racist Afro-Dravidianism of Periyar as ‘an explicitly ethnic conception of the low castes’ identity'. He compares their situation to that of the blacks in South Africa."

"Indeed, from the Indus eastwards, we lose track of this Bactrian invasion. Sergent himself admits as much: “For the sequel, archaeology offers little help. The diggings in India for the 2nd millennium BC reveal a large number of regional cultures, generally rather poor, and to decree what within them represents the Indo-Aryan or the indigenous contribution would be arbitrary. If Pirak (…) represents the start of Indian culture, there is in the present state of Indian archaeology no ‘post-Pirak’ except at Pirak itself, which lasted till the 7th century BC: the site remained, along with a few very nearby ones, isolated.” So, the Bactrian invaders who arrived through the Bolan pass and established themselves in and around the border town of Pirak, never crossed the Indus."

"The present stage of research effectively permits tracing an Asian origin for the Indo-Europeans well before their dispersion."

"The Kurgan people had to originate in Central Asia."

"One of the paradoxes of India is its astonishing linguistic diversity (they speak about five hundred languages there) compared with its cultural unity."

"Shiva, Varuna, Yama, Durga-Parvati, we already said it, are deities of IE origin, the rituals concerning fire, soma and the person of the king are equally of IE if not Indo-Iranian origin. But it is now obvious that the Indo-Aryans, upon arriving in India, have amply harvested the Harappan heritage and included its ritual customs (construction of hearth-altars, rites inside buildings, use of the stellar vestment, ritual baths, fixation of feasts on the stellar equinoxes…) in their own religion."

"“The Vedda, the Melano-Indians and the Indus people and the actual inhabitants of the northern half of India, which classical anthropology used to class as Mediterraneans, all belong to one same human ‘current’ of which they manifest the successive ‘waves’. Everything indicates, physical traits as well as geographical distribution, that the Vedda have arrived first, followed by the Melano-Indians, and then the Indus people.”... “The Italian anthropologist [Mario Cappieri] has emphasized not only that the skulls of Mohenjo Daro resemble those of today’s Sindh and those of Harappa resemble those of today’s Panjab, but even that the individual variability is identical today to what it was four thousand years ago.”"

"“I would have been horrified by what I perceive in the Indo-European world. . . . To live in a trifunctional system would give me the impression of living in a prison. Therefore, I study the three functions, I explore this prison, but I would never want to have lived there. If I was visiting cannibals, I would seek to know as much as possible about them but I would stay well away from the cauldron.”"

"“Greece chose, as always, the best part: instead of the ready-made reflections, the pre-established relationships of people and things that the heritage of its northern ancestors offered it, Greece preferred the risks and opportunities offered by criticism and observation—it regarded humanity, society and the world with new eyes.”"

"Assuming that I am completely wrong, my Indo-Europeans would be like the geometries of Riemann and Lobatchevski: constructions outside of reality. It is already not that bad. I will just have to switch shelves in the library. I will move to the “fiction” section."

"Georges Dumézil (1898-1986) is among the few historians of religion whose theories have found a wider audience outside the discipline, and even outside the academy. For half a century—from the 1930s up until his death—Dumézil was one of the foremost humanists in France, a status which was confirmed at the Panthéon in 1979 when he was welcomed into the Académie Française by Claude Lévi-Strauss as one of the “Forty Immortals.“ The scholarly work that had led Dumézil to this position was based on a wide-ranging hypothesis that all peoples who spoke Indo-European, or, as they were sometimes called even as late as the i960s, "Aryan“ languages had also inherited a common ideology. In the course of his historical and philological research, Dumézil had found traces of this ideology in Roman texts, Greek myths, Indian hymns, and Old Norse saga literature. The ideology was characterized by a special three-part structure that organized distinct cultural fields. This structure above all guided the pantheon and the social order, but also such things as the classification of various kinds of heroic types, punishments, and taxes. At the highest level in this “Indo-European" tripartite structure was the "function“ of the sovereign holders of power—the priests, lawmakers, and kings; below it, that of the warriors; and at the bottom, the function of the people, or producers."

"The debate about Dumézil is still far from resolved. At its core is the question of whether it was only the Nazis who used the historical writing about "Aryans," "Indo-Europeans," or, as the Germans say, “Indo-Germans” for political aims. Did Dumézil, and perhaps other researchers who were active during the 1930s and 1940s, do so as well? If that is the case, what does this entail for the postwar scholarship, which has largely followed the guiding principles of Dumézil? On a more general level, the debate is about whether there is something in the nature of research about Indo-Europeans that makes it especially prone to ideological abuse—perhaps something related to the fact that for the past two centuries, the majority of the scholars who have done research on the Indo-Europeans have considered themselves descendants of this mythical race.(3)"

"During the postwar (post 1945 CE) period, these two theories (Father Wilhelm Schmidt and Father Wilhelm Kopper's theory of primal cultures, and Georges Dumezil's theory of Indo-European mythology) have completely dominated research about Indo-European religion and culture—in spite of the fact that they arose in an ideological atmosphere that did not differ much from the Nazi one (Arvidsson 2006, p. 239, parentheses added)."

"Lincoln argues that Dumézil was, on the contrary, deeply anchored in a Germanophobie French Fascism."

"Through Eribon’s defense, it has nevertheless been shown that Dumézil really did support the French Fascist organization Action française during the 1930s, and that he wrote articles, under a pseudonym, in which he praised Mussolini."

"It was during the 1920s and 1930s that Georges Dumézil supported Action française and wrote for its journals. It was also during this period that he began to develop his own theories about Indo-European mythology. Is it possible that Dumézil used the ancient Indo-Europeans in the same way that the Nazi scholars did (albeit with an entirely different level of scientific accuracy and methodological acuteness)—to give historical legitimacy to a Fascist movement? Did Action française perhaps receive a mythology of origin, a narrative that ascribes such a fundamental meaning to certain ideas and norms that they seem natural and eternal, through the work of Georges Dumézil?"

"Without exaggeration and in a definitive reply to Momigliano (who paradoxically was a member of the Italian Fascist Party before having to flee Mussolini’s anti-Semitic laws) and Ginzburg, we can state that Dumézil was not a Nazi supporter in the 1930s. He was, however, a fascist in the precise meaning of the term."

"In other cases, this suspicion is quite misplaced, e.g. in the case of Georges Dumézil, actually a critic of Nazism, cautious in public but quite outspoken in his minor writings and private communications. It is true that Dumézil sympathized with Italian Fascism, but Fascism stricto sensu contrasted with Nazism in very important respects, esp. in not being racist (the Communist-imposed usage of “fascism” as a generic term or as a synonym of National-Socialism, resulting from Stalin’s desire to avoid staining the term “socialism” with Hitlerian associations, obscures the contrast between the two systems). It has been shown that Dumézil’s sympathy for Fascism and contempt for Nazism may have influenced his views of ancient Germanic religion, which he contrasted unfavourably with ancient Roman religion. In Dumézil’s studies ca. 1940, Germanic religion is criticized as a defective evolute of IE religion, having lost the spiritual and overemphasized the martial function: this was at least partly a projection onto the past of the militarization of Germany in Dumézil’s own day."

"Dumezil was an entirely different sort of person from Pearson, Haudry, and de Benoist, infinitely more intelligent, decent, and much, much less crude. To the best of my knowledge, he had no dealings with Pearson, and over the years he maintained a cautiously ambiguous relation with the two others, both of whom courted him avidly ."

"Il faut de la religion pour la religion, de la morale pour la morale, comme de l'art pour l'art...le beau ne peut être la voie ni de l'utile, ni du bien, ni du saint; il ne conduit qu'à lui-même."

"When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East-above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe-we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy."

"India contains the whole history of philosophy in a nutshell."

"The pandemic has demonstrated the bankruptcy of national sovereignty. The major threats to humanity are global in character, so mutual aid, cooperation and solidarity must be too."

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for all humanity. The two meanings of the French word "épreuve" captures the dual significance of what we now confront: épreuve in the sense of an ordeal, an immense and painful undertaking, but also a test, an evaluation, or a judgment. The pandemic, in other words, is now testing the capacity of our political and economic systems to cope with a global problem situated at the level of our individual interdependence, which is to say at the very foundation of our social life. Like a dystopia made real, the current situation provides us with a glimpse of what soon awaits humanity if global economic and political structures are unable to radically and rapidly transform in order to confront the climate change crisis."

"First observation: around the world, we are all willing to rely on the of the to respond to this global epidemic in two more or less complimentary ways: on the one hand, we count on the state to enact authoritarian measures to limit personal contact, largely by establishing "" (whether officially declared or not) as in Italy, Spain, France and elsewhere. On the other hand, we expect the state to protect citizens by preventing the virus being "imported" from abroad. Social discipline and national are thus the two primary weapons deployed in our fight against the pandemic. Here, we see the two faces of state sovereignty: internal domination and external independence."

"Second observation: we equally depend on the state to help businesses of all sizes endure this trial by providing them with the financial assistance and guaranteed loans they require in order to avoid bankruptcy and retain as much of their as possible. States no longer have any qualms about spending without limits in order to save the economy ⁠— "whatever it takes!" ⁠— while just weeks ago states opposed any request to increase hospital staff, hospital beds, or s, out of its obsessive concern for budgetary constraint and limiting the public debt. States have since rediscovered the virtues of interventionism, at least when it comes to funding and shoring up the . One of the most ambitious stimulus plans to date has been implemented by Germany. Their plan constitutes an abrupt break with the dogmas that have been the norm since the beginning of the ."

"What we have witnessed so far is cause for alarm. The institutional xenophobia of the state form is becoming especially manifest just as we are gaining increasing awareness of the lethal danger the virus poses for all humanity. The European states responded to the initial spread of the coronavirus in a totally uncoordinated fashion. Very quickly, most European states — Central Europe in particular — locked themselves behind the administrative walls of their national territory in order to protect their population from the "foreign virus," and the first countries in Europe to cloister themselves in were also the most xenophobic. This set the tone throughout Europe and the rest of the world: every state must look after their own — to the delight of the in Europe and elsewhere. And nothing has been more abject than the lack of solidarity with the most affected countries. Italy's abandonment by France and Germany — who pushed selfishness to new heights by refusing to send Italy medical equipment and protective masks — sounded the death knell for a Europe built on a foundation of generalized competition between states."

"The WHO has been financially weakened for the past several decades, and is now largely dependent on private donors, with 80 percent of its funding coming from private businesses or foundations. But despite its weakened condition, the WHO could have still provided an initial framework for global cooperation in the fight against the pandemic, not only because of the reliable information it had gathered since the beginning of January, but also because its recommendations for radical and early control of the epidemic were ultimately correct. According to the Director-General of the WHO, the choice to abandon systematic testing and contract tracing, which were effective in Korea and Taiwan, was a major mistake that contributed to the spread of the virus in virtually every country. The ultimate cause of this alarming delay were strategic choices. Italy was quickly forced to adopt a strategy of absolute confinement in order to halt the epidemic, as China had previously done. Other countries waited far too long to react, largely on the basis of the and crypto-Darwinian strategy of "herd immunity." Boris Johnson's United Kingdom was entirely passive in its initial approach, and other countries equivocated and delayed their restrictive measures, such as France and Germany, not to mention the United States."

"By adopting a strategy of "mitigation," or epidemic delay by "," these countries have de facto renounced any serious attempt to keep the virus under control from the start through the use of systematic screening and general confinement of the population, as was done in and Hubei province. According to the forecasts of the German and French governments, the strategy of collective immunity necessitates 50 to 80 percent contamination across the entire population. This amounts to accepting the deaths of hundreds of thousands — even millions — of people who are supposedly the "most fragile." All the while, the WHO’s recommendations were very clear: states must not abandon systematic screening and contact tracing of anyone who tests positive for the virus."

"Why have states placed so little confidence in the WHO, and why have they not accorded the WHO a central role in coordinating the global response to the pandemic? In China, the epidemic effectively paralyzed the country both politically and economically. Freezing economic production and trade has never been practiced on such a scale, and the outcome has been a very serious economic and financial crisis in China. Germany, France and the United States most of all, thus largely hesitated in order to keep their economies running as long as possible — or, more precisely, to balance off economic and imperatives based on how the situation unfolds from "day to day," rather than heeding the more dire, long-term forecasts."

"What has since become abundantly apparent is the destructive influence of behavioral economics and the so-called "nudge theory" of political decision-making, which relies on and stimuli to steer individual behavior, rather than coercion or restraint. We now know that the "nudge unit," or the "," that advises the successfully convinced the state of their theory that individuals who are too quickly constrained by severe measures will tire and relax their discipline when the epidemic reaches its peak, which is precisely when discipline is needed most. Since 2010, 's economic theory — which he outlines in the book Nudge (2009) — is widely thought to be the best means for producing "efficient state governance." This approach tells us to encourage people, without coercing them, to make the best decisions through the use of "nudges": by using gentle, indirect, comfortable and optional influences upon individuals who are still ultimately free to make their own choices. The application of this "" in the fight against the epidemic has been two-fold: (a) the rejection of any coercive measures to regulate individual behavior and (b) a preference for "barrier gestures": keep your distance, wash your hands, cough into your elbow, self-isolate if you have a fever and all for your own benefit. This wager to rely on soft, voluntary measures was risky: there is no scientific or empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in the context of an epidemic. And it is now all too clear that this approach entirely failed."

"It is also worth recalling that French officials adopted this very same approach until March 14. Macron initially refused to adopt strict containment measures because, as he stated on March 6, "restrictive measures are not sustainable over time." As he exited the theater he had attended that very same day with his wife, he declared "Life goes on. There is no reason, save for vulnerable populations, to change our social behaviors." Lurking beneath these words, which seem utterly irresponsible today, one cannot help but detect a tactic in which this libertarian paternalism allowed governments to defer the measures they knew would necessarily disrupt their economies. Nonetheless, the eventual failure of libertarian paternalism to contain the virus compelled the political authorities to radically change course. In France, our first glimpse of this shift was Macron's Presidential Speech on March 12, in which he appealed to national unity, to our sacred union, and to the French people's "strength of character." Macron’s next speech on March 16 was even more explicit in its martial posture and rhetoric: it is time for general mobilization, for "patriotic self-restraint," because "we are now at war." The figure of the sovereign state now manifests itself in its most extreme but also its most classic form: that of the sword that strikes the enemy, "who is there, invisible, elusive and advancing.""

"But there was an even more surprising twist in the president's March 12 address: Emmanuel Macron was suddenly and almost miraculously transformed into a staunch defender of the welfare state, and of . He even affirmed the impossibility of reducing everything to the logic of the market! Many commentators and politicians, several of whom are on the left, eagerly welcomed Macron's recognition of the irreplaceable importance of our public services. Yet what we witnessed here was really little more than a delayed response to Macron's public confrontation with a doctor during his visit to the on February 27. The doctor, a professor of neurology, insisted Macron provide the public hospitals with an "investment shock" ("choc d’attractivité"), and Macron assented to the doctor's demands, at least in principle. It was of course immediately recognized that Macron's subsequent pronouncements were completely hollow, and they in no way called into the question the neoliberal policies his government has methodically pursued for years."

"Nonetheless, during the same press conference, Macron declared that "delegating our food, our protection, or our ability to take care for our living environment to others is madness. We must take back control." This invocation of state sovereignty has been welcomed by many, especially the neo-fascists of the Rassemblement National (the National Rally). The defense of public services would thus seem perfectly aligned with the prerogatives of the sovereign state: removing healthcare from the logic of the market is an act of sovereignty that is now in the process of reversing the many concessions France granted to the European Union in the past. But is it so obvious that the notion of the public service is in fact aligned with the concept of state sovereignty? Does the former depend on the latter? Is the public service indissolubly linked to state sovereignty? This question deserves particularly careful consideration because it is one of the central arguments deployed by the proponents of state sovereignty."

"Let us begin by examining the very nature of state sovereignty. Etymologically, sovereignty means "superiority" (from the Latin superanus), but superiority in regard to what? In brief, it is superiority in regard to any laws or obligations that threaten to limit the power of the state, both in its relation to other states and in relation to its own citizens. The sovereign state places itself above any commitments or obligations, which it is then free to constrict or revoke as it pleases. But as a , the state can only act through its representatives, who are all supposed to embody the continuity of the state over and above the daily exercise of their specific governmental functions. The superiority of the state therefore effectively means the superiority of its representatives over the laws or obligations that impinge upon them. This is the notion of superiority that is elevated to the rank of principle by all sovereigntists. But however unpleasant it may sound, this principle applies regardless of the of its leaders: what is essential is merely that one acts as a representative of the state, regardless of one's particular beliefs about state sovereignty. All the concessions that were successively granted to the EU by the representatives of the French state were acts of sovereignty — for the very construction of the EU, from the beginning, was based on the implementation of the principle of state sovereignty."

"Similarly, the fact that the French state, like so many other European states, has consistently evaded its international obligations regarding the defense of human rights is also part of the logic of sovereignty: the (1998) obliges signatory states to create a safe and healthy environment for . However, the laws and practices of signatory states, and in particular and practices regarding the border it shares with Italy, violates its international obligations. The very same can of course be said with respect to climate change obligations, which states happily ignore based on their particular interests at any given time. And in matters of internal , state sovereignty reigns supreme there as well. To stick to the case of France, the rights of Amerindians in Guyana are routinely denied in the name of the principle of the "One and Indivisible Republic" — an expression that, once again, references the sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty. Ultimately, expressions such as these are little more than alibis that allow state representatives to exempt themselves from any obligation that might legitimate citizen control over the state."

"It is important to keep this last point in mind, for it is crucial in terms of understanding the public character of the so-called "public" service. The precise meaning of the word "public" demands our full attention here, because it is too rarely recognized that the concept of "public" is absolutely irreducible to the "state." The term "publicum" designates not merely the state administration, but the entire community as constituted by all citizens: public services are not state services, in the sense that the state can dispense these services as it pleases, nor are they merely an extension of the state: they are public in the sense that they exist "in the service of the public." It is in this sense that they constitute a of the state toward its citizens."

"Public services, in other words, are owed by the state — and its governors — to the governed. They are nothing like a favor that the state generously extends toward the governed, despite the negative connotations years of liberal polemics have imposed upon the phrase "the welfare state." , one of the most important theorists of the public service, made this fundamental point at the beginning of the twentieth century: it is the primacy of the duties of those in power in relation to the governed that forms the basis of what we call the "public service." For Duguit, public services are not a manifestation of state power, but a limitation of governmental power. The public service is a mechanism by which the governors become the servants of the governed. These obligations, which are imposed on those who govern as well as the agents of government, form the basis of what Duguit calls "public responsibility." This is why the public service is a principle of social solidarity, one which is imposed on all, and not a principle of sovereignty, inasmuch as the latter is incompatible with the very idea of public responsibility. This conception of the public service has largely been suppressed by the fiction of state sovereignty. But the public service nonetheless continues to make itself felt by virtue of the strong connection citizens feel toward what they still consider to be a . For the citizen's right to public services is the strict corollary of the duty or obligation of state representatives to provide public services. This why the citizens of various European countries affected by the current crisis have demonstrated, in diverse ways, their attachment to public services in their daily fight against the coronavirus: for instance, the citizens of numerous Spanish cities have applauded their healthcare workers from their balconies, regardless of their political attitude toward the centralized ."

"Two relations must therefore be carefully separated here: the citizenry’s attachment to the public service, and healthcare in particular, in no way suggests adherence to public authority or public power in its various forms, but rather suggests an attachment to services whose essential function is to meet the public's need. Far from disclosing an underlying identification with the nation, this attachment gestures toward a sense of a universal that crosses borders, and accordingly renders us sensitive to the trials our "pandemic co-citizens" are enduring, whether they are Italian, Spanish, or live beyond European borders. We are extremely skeptical of Macron's promise to be the first leader to question "our developmental model" after the crisis is over, and there are plenty of reasons to think that the drastic economic measures currently in place will eventually share the same fate as those enacted during the 2008 economic crisis: we will likely see a concerted effort to "return to normal" — i.e., return to our otherwise uninterrupted destruction of the planet amidst increasingly conditions of social inequality. And we fear the enormous stimulus packages designed to "save the economy" will once again be borne on the backs of the lowest-paid workers and taxpayers."

"Humility is the good and solid foundation of virtues; should it waver, the whole house of virtues collapses."

"Reading seeks for the sweetness of a blessed life, meditation perceives it, prayer asks for it, contemplation tastes it."

"There is little sweetness in the study of the literal sense, unless there be a commentary, which is found in the heart, to reveal the inward sense."

"What is the use of spending one's time in continuous reading, turning the pages of the lives and sayings of holy men, unless we can extract nourishment from them by chewing and digesting this food so that its strength can pass into our inmost heart?"

"O my God, so good and tender and kind, dear friend, wise counselor, powerful support, how heartless and rash is the man who rejects you, who casts from his heart so humble and gentle a guest!"

"Let him sit alone, the Scripture says; and indeed, unless he sits and rests, he will not be alone."

"He who is mounted on pride does not know how to sit still."

"He who is not alone cannot be silent. And he who is not silent cannot hear you when you speak to him."

"Let all my world be silent in your presence, Lord, so that I may hear what the Lord God may say in my heart. Your words are so softly spoken that no one can hear them except in deep silence."

"Strangely, instead of clearly, straightforwardly condemning the act, the Indian English-language press tried to justify it: “Pilgrims provoked by chanting pro-Hindu slogans” (they were not slogans but bhajans, or devotional songs, ending with “Jai Sri Ram” (Victory to Sri Rama). “It’s because they were returning from Ayodhya, where they asked for the reconstruction of a temple at the traditional birth place of Rama; this offends the feelings of the Muslims.” In sum, the victims, roasted alive, were guilty. Numb with shock, the people of Gujarat did not react straightaway. They remained calm at first. Till that afternoon, when the charred bodies started arriving at their respective families—with no comforting voice, no condemnation of this barbaric act—then these people known for their non- violent nature and exceptional patience, burst into a frenzy."

"We read all over about a “genocide of Muslims”. Do we remember a single report on the Hindus who heroically helped save Muslims in their neighbourhood? Was even one family of Hindu victims interviewed following the criminal burning of the Sabarmati Express? One fourth of the dead in the ensuing riots were Hindus. How to classify those 250 victims? Who evoked the dead on the Hindu side? According to reports, Congress Party councillor Taufeeq Khan Pathan and his son Zulfi, notorious gangsters, were allegedly seen leading Muslim rioters. Another such character, Congress member of the Godhra Nagarpalika [municipality], Haji Balal, was said to have had the fire- fighting vehicle sabotaged beforehand... Which newspaper article stated that the most violent events took place following provocations by leaders of this sort? The Union Home Ministry's Annual Report of 2002-03 stated that 40,000 Hindus were in riot relief camps. What made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? To seek protection from whom? Why was it necessary if they were the main aggressors? More than the barbaric event itself, it is the insensitivity of the Indian “elite” and of the media that infuriated the Gujaratis. Those accused of terrorism often receive political support, are benevolently portrayed by the media, and a host of “human rights” organisations are always on hand to fight for them. But those victims whose lives are cut down for no reason, are they not “human” enough to get some rights too?"

"Apart from local journalists usually more objective in their reports, no English newswriter thought it worthwhile to look deeper into the events at the Godhra railway station. Nobody came to question possible survivors of the tragedy. Is a coach of Hindu pilgrims even worth the trip? They had to wait for the “elite” to react; they had to receive directives from the politically correct, before picking up their pens. Worse, they reported deliberate rumours and made up versions as actual news."

"And why were 2,000 Muslims assembled there at 7 A.M. with jerry-cans of petrol bought the previous evening?"

"Inquiries with the Railway staff and passengers travelling in the Sabarmati Express showed that no quarrel whatsoever took place on the platform between a tea vendor and pilgrims, and no girl was manhandled nor kidnapped. As the Nanavati Report established later, this fictitious report was in fact circulated by the Jamiat-Ulma-E-Hind, the very hand responsible for the carnage. It nevertheless went around the world, exhibited as “the true story.” Aren’t we compelled to conclude that the assailants, in India, are those who dictate what’s “politically correct,” and instruct the media?"

"A few journalists then booked their tickets for Gujarat. As far as we can see, they had a framework in place: the outbreak would be dealt with independently of the Godhra carnage, as a different, unrelated issue; it was a planned violence perpetrated by “fundamentalist” Hindus against Gujarat’s Muslims, fully backed by the State of Gujarat. From this day on, the burning of coach S-6 was to be left behind, forgotten."

"The Gujarat Government sued Outlook magazine. In its May 27 issue, Outlook published an apology to save its face. But in the course of its apology, the magazine’s editors quoted a “clarification” from Roy, who withdrew her lie by planting an even bigger one: the MP’s daughters “were not among the 10 women who were raped and killed in Chamanpura that day”! From Smita Narula to Arundhati Roy, “four or five girls” had swollen to “ten women,” equally anonymous and elusive... This redefines the term “fiction writer”."

"Another story about a “pregnant Muslim woman” whose stomach was allegedly “ripped open,” her “foetus taken out” and both being burnt, horrified people all over the world. The first mention of it seems to be in a BBC report around March 6, which, though “uncorroborated,” spread like wildfire, with fresh details (divergent and varied, but who cares?), so much so that you end up feeling there is no smoke without fire. The rumour was never confirmed— which twisted tongue first whispered it?"

"Human Rights Watch, an NGO based in New York, published a dossier (April 30, 2002) about the Gujarat events which caused a sensation and fed a large number of articles in the international press. At that point we jump into the sensational... Those rapes and hackings are said to have started at 3:30 P.M. ... when the house was already on fire. Was the mob waiting for everything to be reduced to cinders to commit its crimes?"

"Press articles kept quoting one another, creating “dossiers” out of floating rumours. None of the authors even deigned to visit the scene of the alleged events; none except the official inquiry commissions, had the honesty to question fairly, in parallel, the involved Hindu families regarding the tragedy unfolding in the two Gujarati communities."

"Consequently, just after the fast-track court acquittals, three members of Zaheera’s community “barged into her home” around midnight, and told her she would have to change her statement “in the interests of the community.” This meant that Zaheera had to declare that she had lied to the court (which is a criminal offence). Did she have a choice? Along with her mother and brother, she was taken to Mumbai “without their consent,” and brought to Teesta Setalvad, 11 an activist of the much- vaunted “human rights.” The activist took them under her wing for several months, accommodated them in a rented apartment while providing assistance for a living. In the meantime she prepared affidavits (in English which Zaheera does not read) for the girl to sign before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in which she “confessed” to having lied to the Vadodara trial court, “trembling with fear and threatened” by BJP MLA Madhu Shrivastav (who had nothing to do with her area and whom she did not even know). And Zaheera now designated as guilty, the twenty-one people she had considered innocent. All media were ready with their cameras, mikes and pens to splash the news."

"In 2004, Zaheera “managed to flee” from her confinement by the activist, and in November, seized by remorse for having allowed innocent people to be accused, stated in an affidavit before the Vadodara Collector that whatever she had told the Supreme Court, was done under duress from Teesta Setalvad and her associate Rais Khan; and whatever she told the NHRC was a lie. “Ramzan is on and I want to state the truth,” she said. “What I had said in Vadodara Court during the trial was my true statement. The judgement was correct and had given me all the justice I wanted.” She sought police protection from Teesta Setalvad. 12"

"Especially in light of the revelation that “a host of Gujarat riot case victims were misled into signing affidavits giving false information, for which as many as ten of them had received 100,000 rupees from Setalvad’s Citizens for Justice and Peace. A list of names were sent to the CPI(M) relief fund, and demand drafts were handed out at a function in Ahmedabad on August 26, 2007 by CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat, Teesta Setalvad and Rais Khan.” 14 On April 13, 2009, the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) charged the activist Teesta Setalvad, with “adding morbidity” to the post-Godhra riots by “cooking up macabre tales of killings”. The SIT report stated that all the affidavits of 22 witnesses were drafted, typed and printed from the same computer, giving sufficient grounds to believe they were “tutored”. When the SIT questioned those who signed the affidavits, it was shocked to learn that these complainants were not even aware of the incidents. 15"

"In December 2004, a fatwa was issued against Zaheera by the Muslim Tayohar Committee, excommunicating her with the approval of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, “for having constantly lied.” In other words, for having stood by the twenty-one wrongly accused Hindus neighbours."

"Human Rights Watch Smita Narula’s report (30 April 2002) was titled “ ‘We have no order to save you’—State participation and complicity in anti-Muslim violence.” Issued from US shores, its words were lapped up by the Indian elite and politicians... But where are the facts to corroborate such an allegation, which of course was instantly peddled the world over? Can a “carefully orchestrated attack” happen overnight? And how can someone sitting in the U.S., gauge the “spontaneity” of such an outbreak?"

"In rural areas the Vanavasis attacked the Muslim moneylenders, shopkeepers and the forest contractors. They used their traditional bows and arrows as also their implements used to cut trees and grass while attacking Muslims. They moved in groups and used coded signals for communication. Apparently, the accumulated anger of years of exploitation ... had become explosive."

"English language newspapers ... appeared to have assumed the role of crusaders against the State [Gujarat] Government from day one. It coloured the entire operation of news gathering, feature writing and editorials. They distorted and added fiction to prove their respective points of view. The code of ethics prescribed by the Press Council of India was violated ... with impunity. It so enraged the citizens that several concerned citizens in the disturbed areas suggested that peace could return to the state only if some of the TV channels were closed for some weeks."

"Neelkanth Bhatia, among the few survivors, was not. He gathered enough strength to challenge the formation of this committee, and in October 2006, the Gujarat High Court quashed the conclusions of the Banerjee Committee. It declared its formation as a “colourful exercise,” “illegal, unconstitutional, null and void,” and its argument of accidental fire “opposed to the prima facie accepted facts on record.” Moreover, one high-level commission conducted by Justice Nanavati-Shah had been appointed by the Gujarat Government to probe the incident, two months earlier. The Court also did not miss the point that the interim report was released just two days before the elections in Bihar—the State of the Railways minister, well-known for his political ambitions and notorious for his histrionics. Politicians know no common sense or shame. But what about the judiciary?"

"It is easy to see why the Nanavati Report was frowned upon by Citizens for Justice and Peace, namely Activist Teesta Setalvad who asked the Supreme Court “to restrain the Gujarat Government from acting upon, circulating and publishing this report.” Fortunately on October 13, 2008, the highest court sharply turned down the petition, thus making the testimonies and inquiries available to all."

"However, under pressure from the UPA Government and pestered by the National Human Rights Commission and Citizens for Justice and Peace NGO, on October 21, 2008, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan (whose tenure was marked by allegations of misbehaviour) directed that the Prevention of Terrorist Act (POTA) could not be used against the 134 accused in the Godhra train burning incident. The trial would have to be held under the regular provisions of the Indian Penal Code. This amounted to accepting prima facie that the guilty were not terrorists..."

"This appears to be a pattern: whenever Muslim riots or bomb attacks target Hindus, it is thought acceptable to accuse the victims, in order to avoid possible revolts. Thus in 1993 in Mumbai, after eleven coordinated bomb blasts in Hindu majority areas, which killed 257 people and injured 713, the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar quickly cooked up a twelfth explosion ... in a Muslim area! “I have deliberately misled people,” he explained later, to show that both communities had been affected.” 25 And to portray both communities’ potential to behave as “terrorists”. Truth and clarity of mind are the casualties."

"On 27 February 2002, when a coach of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya went up in flames at Godhra railway station, a Congress member of the Godhra municipality, Haji Balal, led a mob and stopped the fire-fighting vehicle on its way to the station. The fire crew reported that “he had been visiting the fire station at night for the past few days on the pretext of watching films on television.” Haji Balal, a few days earlier, had the clutch plates of one of the main fire-fighting vehicles removed; in the second vehicle, the nut connecting the pipe to the water tank was spirited away."

"In order to quickly gather a crowd of angry Muslims to the Godhra station and attack the train, so that no one would guess who was pouring petrol in the S6 and S7 coaches, rumours that a Ghanchi Muslim girl had been abducted by the Kar Sevaks were spread by the Jamiat-Ulema-E-Hind (JUH), a long-standing ally of the Congress."

"They however found a fertile ground in the US, especially with the evangelical lobbies. 14 On 1 st April 2002 Teesta Setalvad created “Citizens for Justice and Peace” (CJP), an NGO “outsourced by the Congress to the job of attacking Modi”, as Madhu Kishwar put it. 15 The activists approached the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a U.S. government-funded body, with known roots in the evangelical movement, whose “original intention was to protect Christians around the world ... to review facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally — and to make policy recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and the Congress”. 16 Testifying before the USCIRF, Teesta Setalvad alleged that the BJP had conducted: successful pogroms and attacks against the countries religious minorities, ..."

"This “testimony” from India is what fed countless self-styled human rights organizations and intellectuals in India and in the West. They drank in Setalvad’s words and regurgitated them as articles and “reports” with a plethora of gory details."

"As for Sanjeev Bhatt’s testimony, the SIT called fax messages produced by him “not genuine”, “forged document, fabricated subsequently by someone with a vested interest.” 25 “This conduct of Shri Sanjiv [sic] Bhatt in arranging, prompting and controlling the witness [a witness produced by him] to corroborate his statement is highly suspicious and undesirable.” 26 And from the location of his mobile phone, his claim of being present at the said meeting at the Chief Minister’s residence proved to be false. “Shri Sanjiv Bhatt is a tainted witness and therefore, cannot be relied upon keeping in view his background in the police department as he was involved in criminal cases of serious nature and departmental inquiries are also in progress against him.” 27 Cases against him included inflicting torture in custody leading to death, abduction, extortion and unprovoked firing, killings and planting narcotics with a view to blackmail. SIT head R.K. Raghavan concluded that Bhatt had lied and brought in tutored witnesses to falsely implicate Modi. 28 The Gujarat Vigilance Commission recommended his suspension twice (on 15-07-2002 and 19-10-2006) for professional misconduct, but each time he managed to evade prosecution."

"A last brush stroke on Sanjeev Bhatt’s erratic comportment is given by senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani in a Sunday Guardian article. The man “handed over charge and his official computer, leaving all his emails in an unprotected mode for all to read”... The state government forwarded the material to the SIT for investigations, and thanks to this irresponsible gesture, authorities harvested details of his “hobnobbing with the Opposition Congress party in a thoroughly illegal and almost seditious manner to concoct evidence against the Chief Minister and the state of Gujarat”. To this end Bhatt was in constant touch with top Congress party leaders, from whom he received not only guidance,but “packages” and “materials”, as per his own statement."

"Santidas, Pagod, The Ceremonie of King Auranzev, for converting a Pagod into a mosque. Amedabad being inhabited also by a great number of Heathens, there are Pageds, or Idol-Temples in it. That which was called the Pagod of Santidas was the chief, before Auranzeb converted it into a Mosque. When he performed the Ceremonie, he caused a Cow to be killed in the place, knowing very well, that after such an Action, the Gentiles according to their Law, could worship no more therein. All round the Temple there is a Cloyster furnished, with lovely Cells, beautified with Figures of Marble in relief, representing naked Women sitting after the Oriental fashion. The inside Roof of the Mosque is pretty enough, and the Walls are full of the Figures of Men and Beasts; but Auranzeb, who hath always made 2 (to) shew of an affected Devotion, which at length raised him to the Throne, caused the Noses of all these Figures which added a great deal of Magnificence to that Mosque, to be beat off."

"“After all, the vulgar opinion of the Gentiles, touching the God Ram, is that he was produced, and came out of the Light, in the same manner as the Fringe of a Belt comes out of that Belt; and if they Assign him a Father whom they call Desser (Dasharath), and a Mother named Gaoucella (Kausalya); that is only for form sake, seeing he was not born: And in that consideration, the Indians render him divine Honours in their Pagods, and elsewhere; And when they salute their Friends they repeat his Name, saying Ram, Ram. Their Adoration consists in joining their hands, as if they Prayed, letting them fall very low, and then lifting them up again gently to their mouth, and last of all, in raising them over their head.” (Part III, p. 65)"

"In the mean while, the Raja, who could not rest, plundered some places belonging to the Great Mogul; which obliged that Emperour to send Forces against him, under the conduct of Chasta-Can [Shaista Khan] his Uncle, Governour of Aurangeabad. Chasta-Can having far more Forces than Sivagy had, vigorously pursued him, but the Raja having his retreat always in the Mountains, and being extreamly cunning the Mogul could make nothing of him. However that old Captain at length, thinking that the turbulent Spirit of Sivagy might make him make some false step, judged it best to temporize, and lay a long while upon the Lands of the Raja. This Patience of Chasta-Can being very troublesome to Sivagy, he had his recourse to a Stratagem. He ordered one of his Captains to write to that Mogul, and to perswade him that he would come over to the service of the Great Mogul, and bring with him five hundred Men whom he had under his Command. Chasta-Can having recei’d the Letters, durst not trust them at first; but receiving continually more and more, and the Captain giving him such reasons for his discontent as looked very probable, he sent him word that he might come and bring his Men with him. No sooner was he come into the Camp of the Moguls, but he desired a Passport to go to the King that he might put himself into his Service: But Chasta-Can thought it enough to put him in hopes of it, and kept him with him. Sivagy had ordered him to do what he could what he could to insinuate himself into the favour of Chasta-Can, and to spare no means that could bring that about, to shew upon all occasions the greatest rancour and animosity imaginable; and in a particular manner to be the first in Action against him or his Subjects. He fail’d not to obey him: He put all to Fire and Sword in the Raja’s Lands, and did much more mischief than all the rest besides; which gained him full credit in the Mind of Chasta-Can, who at length made him Captain of his Guards. But he guarded him very ill, for having one Day sent word to Sivagy, that on a certain Night he should be upon Guard at the General’s Tent; the Raja came there with his Men, and being introduced by his Captain, came to Chasta-Can, who awakening flew to his Arms, and was wounded in the Hand; however he made a shift to escape, but a Son of his was killed, and Sivagy thinking that he had killed the General himself, gave the signal to retreat: He marched off with his Captain and all his Horse in good order."

"He carried off the General’s Treasure, and took his Daughter, to whom he rendered all the Honour he could. He commanded his Men under rigorous pains, not to do her the least hurt, but on the contrary, to serve her with all respect; and being informed that her Father was alive, he sent him word, That if he would send the Summ which he demanded for her Ransoom, he would send him back his Daughter safe and sound; which was punctually performed. He [Shaista Khan] informed the King, that it was impossible to force Sivagy in the Mountains; that he could not undertake it, unless he resolved to ruine his Troops; and he received Orders from Court to draw off under pretext of a new Enterprize. Sivagy, in the mean time, was resolved to be revenged on the Mogul by any means whatsoever, provided it might be to his advantage, and knowing very well that the Town of Surrat was full of Riches, he took measures how he might plunder it: But that no body might suspect his Design, he divided the Forces he had into two Camps; and seeing his Territories lie chiefly in the Mountains, upon the Road betwixt Bassaim and Chaoul, he pitched one Camp towards Chaoul, where he planted one of his Pavillions, and posted another at the same time towards Bassaim; and having ordered his Commanders not to plunder, but on the contrary, to pay for all they had, he secretly disguised himself in the habit of a Faquir. Thus he went to discover the most commodious ways that might lead him speedily to Surrat: He entered the Town to examine the places of it, and by that means had as much time as he pleased to view it all over. Being come back to his Chief Camp, he ordered four thousand of his Men to follow him without noise, and the rest to remain encamped, and to make during his absence as much noise as if all were there, to the end none might suspect the enterprise he was about, but think he was still in one of his Camps. Every thing was put in execution according to his orders…Sivagy’s Men entered the Town and plundered it for a space of four days burning down several Houses….it is believed at Surrat that this Raja Carried away in Jewels, Gold and Silver, to the value of above thirty French Millions…The Great Mogul was sensibly affected with the Pillage of that Town, and the boldness of Sivagy…when he Plundered Surrat in the Year One thousand six hundred and sixty four, he was but thirty-five years of Age."

"With such simple tools the patient Hindu, thanks to his industry, can produce specimens of work which are often not to be distinguished from those imported at great expense from foreign countries."

"It must be admitted that the laws of etiquette and social politeness are much more clearly laid down, and much better observed by all classes of Hindus, even by the lowest, than they are by people of corresponding social position in Europe."

"And there is no stronghold of evil so impregnable as Brahmins."

"I have never seen anything in the history of the Egyptians and Jews," writes Abbe Dubois, forty years a resident of India, "that would induce me to believe that either of these nations, or any other on the face of the earth, have been established earlier than the Hindus, and particularly the Brahmans; so I cannot be induced to believe that the latter have drawn their rites from foreign nations. On the contrary, I infer that they have drawn them from an original source of their own. Whoever knows anything of the spirit and character of the Brahmans, their stateliness, their pride, and extreme vanity, their distance, and sovereign contempt for everything that is foreign, and of which they cannot boast to have been the inventors, will agree with me that such a people cannot have consented to draw their customs and rules of conduct from an alien country."

"But there is this vast difference between the ancient philosophers and the modern sages of India, that the former were too few in number to influence the public mind, and had not sufficient support, to combat successfully the errors into which the multitude had fallen ; whereas the Brahmans, from their numbers and the high consideration in which they are held, if they seriously desired it, and if their interest and passions. did not run the other way, might throw down by a single effort, the whole edifice of idolatry in India, and substitute without difficulty, in its room, the knowledge and worship of the true God; of whom they themselve still preserves the loftiest conceptions."

"In 1823, Dubois published a book titled—‘Letters on the State of Christianity in India’, which contained a short phrase—‘In which the conversion of the Hindoos is considered as impracticable’."

"[Dubois opined that Bible translations will] ‘expose the Christian religion and its followers to the ridicule of the public’."

"There is absolutely not a shadow of a doubt that the Greeks knew all about Indian philosophy."

"Look at the solar system, and look at the Earth. On Earth, there are many intelligent species, but only one has achieved technology. Right here in the journey of our own solar system, there is a very, very powerful message that says here's how we should look for alien life, small and big. So yeah, microbes are talking and we are listening, and they are taking us, one planet at a time and one moon at a time, towards their big brothers out there. And they are telling us about diversity, they are telling us about abundance of life, and they are telling us how this life has survived thus far to reach civilization, intelligence, technology and, indeed, philosophy."

"I think that we must not break off all contacts or interrupt the negotiations but, at the same time, we must not be naïve. We must understand that the objective of the negotiations for the North Koreans is to prolong the life of the regime. The longer they last, the more advantageous it is for them. But what concretely? Certainly, financial promises on the Western side in return for hot air, for promises which are more easily broken than made. I think that we must claim much more concrete services in return for the diplomatic recognition granted to the regime by the EU. Think of the system of labour camps where whole families live with their children. What crimes have been committed by those children who must experience and see cruelty every day? Their father or their mother is an alleged "opponent" to the regime, that is all. We must claim the release of children from the camps."

"The central Post Office in Lahore was flooded with thousands of postcards addressed to Hindus and Sikhs. They depicted men and women being raped and slaughtered. . On the back was the message : “ This is what is happening to our Sikh and Hindu brothers and sisters at the hands of the Moslems when they take over ..."

"The gutters of Lahore were running red with blood. The beautiful Paris of the Orient was a vista of desolation and destruction. Whole streets of Hindu homes were ablaze while Moslem police and troops stood by watching. At night, the sounds of looters ransacking those homes seemed to Atkins like the crunch of termites boring into logs."

"In Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, Hindu moneylenders, shopkeepers and zamindars (Sikh landlords) would disappear… if Pakistan is ours, so too are shops, farms, houses and factories of the Hindus and Sikhs."

"The science that made the pyramids possible was chemistry, or, more precisely... alchemy. ...[T]he legendary Philosopher's Stone represents the last misinterpreted vestiges of the alchemical science that flourished during the Pyramid Age ...Technically alchemy encompasses historical chemical developments. ...There were great alchemical achievements during antiquity."

"Temperatures can be raised with energy released during exothermic... reactions. Copper and are commonly located in close proximity... A mixture of ... ...and ... ...heated to only to 700 °C ...automatically reaches a temperature, through a heat producing chemical reaction, that is close to that for extracting copper. The addition of a flux, which in Egypt was a native salt called (), lowered the fusion point sufficiently for copper extraction. Silver can be smelted similarly."

"Egyptian alchemists developed vibrant blue enamel... a by-product of copper . ...[A]n experimenter mixed a powder of with and applied a flame. The... hard, glossy blue enamel... was ...applied to beads and pebbles."

"The ancient Egyptians are well known for using minerals such as chrysocolla and to produce enamels... They had a word for such products, ari-kat, meaning man-made or synthetic. ...[T]he highest spiritual influence was attributed to stone. ... and other red stones represented the blood of ...Lapis lazuli was associated with daybreak. Chrysocolla was associated with ...the "First Time" event of Creation. ...[M]inerals and rocks had divine properties in a world where all of nature was revered."

"All available stones... possessed sacred, eternal qualities. ...[A]ll living things perish ...the imposing rocks and cliffs stood eternally. ...[S]tone was symbolic of the eternal realm. ...[S]tone materials were devoted exclusively to religious monuments and sacred funerary paraphernalia. ...intended to survive for eternity."

"When the Egyptian alchemists developed glassmaking during the New Kingdom, it was to carry on the old religious tradition of making synthetic stones."

"[T]he priests of had long been adept at the art of making extraordinary cements. Cement found in... the Great Pyramid... is still in good condition. This ancient mortar is far superior to cements used in construction today. The modern used to repair ancient Egyptian monuments has cracked and degraded..."

"[T]he pyramid blocks are not natural stone; the blocks are actually exceptionally high-quality concrete—synthetic stone—cast directly in place. The blocks consist of... ninety to ninety-five percent limestone rubble and five to ten percent cement. ...imitations of natural limestone, made in the age-old tradition of alchemical stonemaking. No stone cutting or heavy hauling was ever required..."

"I am a research scientist specializing in low-temperature mineral synthesis. In 1972 I founded the private research company CORDI (Coordination and Development of Innovation), and, in 1979, the Geopolymer Institute, both in France. At the Geopolymer Institute a new branch of chemistry that I named ization. I currently have more than twenty-five international patents for geopolymeric products and processes. My products are made... by large manufacturers. The products have many diverse applications."

"Geopolymeric products range from advanced materials to simple, yet highly sophisticated cements. The geopolymeric cements are made with inorganic chemical reactions in which alumina and silica materials are integrated to form synthetic s, secondary rock-forming minerals."

"There is no way of distinguishing a synthetic zeolite from a natural one."

"[G]eopolymeric cements are chemically comparable to the natural cements that bind such stones as , puddingstone, and fossil-shell ."

"Geopolymers are revolutionary for the concrete industry. Any type of rock aggregate can be used, and concrete made with geopolymeric binder is practically indistinguishable from natural stone. ...This is unprecedented technology; no tremendous heat or pressure is required... Geopolymeric concrete sets rapidly at room temperatures to form synthetic stone, beautiful in appearance and abundant with unprecedented properties."

"Advanced technology plays no part in the production of s. ...An individual of the could produce geopolymers... [with] the knowledge that comes from intelligent, repeated observation and experimentation with substances found..."

"[S]uitable ingredients were available in... millions of tons. Mud from the Nile... contains alumina and is well suited for low-temperature mineral synthesis. The salt is extraordinarily abundant in the deserts and salt lakes."

"reacts with lime and water to produce caustic soda, the main ingredient for alchemically making stone. An abundance of lime would have been available by calcining in simple hearths."

"In ancient times the Sinai mines were rich in deposits of and , neede for the production of synthetic zeolites. The mines also contained the arsenic minerals of and , needed to produce rapid hydraulic setting in large concrete blocks."

"Nile was used for making sun-dried mud bricks and various minerals were used to make enamels. was a sacred product not only used for flux, but also for mummification and deification rites."

"How should we consider geopolymers? ...a new material, a new binder or a new cement for concrete? Geopolymers are all of these. They are new materials for coatings and adhesives, new binders for fiber composites, waste encapsulation and new cement for concrete. The properties and uses are being explored in... inorganic... physical... [and] colloid chemistr[ies], mineralogy, geology, and... engineering process technologies. The ...potential applications... fire resistant materials, decorative stone artifacts, thermal insulation, low-tech building materials, low energy ceramic tiles, refractory items, thermal shock refractories, foundry applications, cements and concretes, composites for infrastructures repair and strengthening, composites for infrastructure repair and strengthening, high-tech composites for aircraft interior and automobile, high-tech resin systems, radioactive and toxic waste containment, arts and decoration... archaeology and history of sciences."

"In my pursuit to develop new inorganic polymer materials, I was struck by the fact that the same simple hydrothermal conditions governed the synthesis of some organic plastics in alkali medium, as well as s and s. Thus and polycondense into... ... On the other hand, the reacts with NaOH at 100-150°C and polycondenses into hydrated ... or hydroxysodalite... I proceeded... to develop amorphous to semi-crystalline three-dimensional silico-aluminate [-Si-O-Al-O-] materials, which I call... s (mineral polymers resulting from or geosynthesis)."

"[T]he real breakthrough took place when, in 1978-1980, we developed... a -based geopolymeric liquid binder comprising soluble alkali-silicate... the first mineral resin ever manufactured. ...The commercial product ...GeopolymiteTM, was a good fire resistant alternative to organic resin."

"In... 1983, with Joseph Sawyer as head of Lone Star's research laboratory... I started to develop early high-strength geopolymeric binders and cements based on based on both geopolymeric and hydraulic cement chemistries. Within one month Lone Star Industries Inc. formed the development company, PYRAMENT... exclusively dedicated to... this new class of cement. ...It was discovered that the addition of ground blast furnace slag, which is a latent hydraulic cementitious product, to the poly(sialate) type of geopolymer, accelerates the setting time and... improves compressive and flexural strength. The first Davidovits and Sawyer patent was filed in... 1984... The corresponding European patent... in 1985... and these... disclose our preliminary finding...of 1983. Geopolymer cements are acid-resistant cementitious materials with zeolitic properties that can be applied to long-term containment of hazardous and toxic wastes."

"Major efforts were dedicated to greenhouse CO2 mitigation with the development of low CO2 geopolymer cements. My research... started in 1990 at Penn-State University... The production of 1 tonne of kaolin based-geopolymeric cement generates 0.180 tonnes of CO2, from combustion carbon-fuel, compared with... Portland cement... six times less. Fly ash based-geopolymeric cement... up to nine times less than Portland..."

"... form[s]... one of the major areas of materials science. ...Inorganic chemistry concerns basic molecules such as s, metals, s, and minerals. ...[M]ost of the raw materials for geopolymer synthesis are rock-forming minerals. ...There are numerous reasons for being interested in mineral polymers, more specifically in geopolymers. One is to get fire and heat properties that cannot be covered by organic materials. Another is the bridge... between polymer science and ceramics."

"In 1975-1976, when I first presented the concept of mineral polymer, scientists who could not imagine that polymers existed outside... of organic polymers very often fustigated my research and new terminology."

"[I]n the... early stage of polymer chemistry the question was raised on the ability of Si to generate chains... analogous to the s. ... (1912) isolated the compound SiH4, the chemical structure ...equivalent of (CH4). ...F. S. Kipping published his results on the preparation of the ... group (also called siloxo) Si-O-Si ...from the condensation of two groups and formation of water ...The ...reaction yielded ...organic mineral polymers known as s. ...Very soon after this ...it became evident that the silicone bridge -Si-O-Si- had something in common with the ...structure of (Almeningen et. al., 1963)."

"[T]here is one theory that is never taught by Egyptology, but which is obvious. I call it Theorem Number One. The stone has a religious meaning. Stone is used only for tombs, pyramids and temples. Stone is never used for secular constructions, never for palaces, garrison, houses that are made out of wood, clay, brick, never in stone, except during the Greek period... and during the Roman occupation. So never, during the genuine Egyptian civilization, was the use of stone permitted for secular constructions."

"[A]t the roots of Egyptian civilization we have two geneses. two genitors, two ways of creating man. The oldest is the one of the god . The youngest is the one of the god . We have two antagonistic religions... and two different technological civilizations that will support these religions."

"The god Khnum is depicted... on his potter wheel... creating the body of the and his ka and his eternal soul by petrifying, by using clay. ...[H]e kneads humanity and the gods with clay and silt. ...[T]his is the Genesis that we are accustomed to read in the Bible, and it is also the type of Genesis that is depicted in the Quran. ...The ka is the soul in eternal stone."

"For the god creation is the divine incarnation in the agglomeration of stone."

"[W]e discover that for Cheops, for the builder of the most impressive monument of antiquity, its actual name is Knum Kufu: may the god Khnum protect Cheops. ...The pyramids must have been done within the technology associated with Khnum, which is agglomeration."

"[F]or the god it is different. "A mountain of mud began to rise up from the shadow's waters, the mountain of mud swelled up, casting out bubbles and took the form of the first god Amun. And Amun pulled out (carved) the limbs and all the parts of his body, and these parts of the body of Amum were transformed into men, animals, and all creation..." This is different..."

"[F]or god in the creation, he carves mankind and the other gods in his body, the mountain. The creation is the divine incarnation in carved stone."

"had his temple at dug out, in the body of Amun, in the hill of sandstone, and we understand that the temples in Thebes, in , in were made of carved stone... cut very carefully in the body of Amum, and we understand why the s out of granite have been called "the finger of Amun.""

"[W]e have two civilizations, one in the north that flourished during the Old Kingdom, god , agglomerated stone, [and] that in the south that flourished under the New Kingdom, god , and carved stone."

"Egyptology has never found any text proving that the pyramids were built with carving stones that were hoisted on sledges and ramps. ...[T]hey say there is no text because it is a sacred system that should not be revealed ...We are ...dealing with ...texts that are describing technological information..."

"[I]t is very difficult to translate a technical text... if you are not aware of the signification of the keywords. ...[I]magine that I got a text from Egypt that has been translated... [as] "make fluid stone with ashes insect in glass water"... what we have in reality is the description of, to make cement with fly ashes and water glass."

"So we have the text, and the first one is the... renowned... Famine Stele at Sehel... engraved in 2000 BC... a copy of more ancient texts dating to the time of the pyramids. ...We have the Pharaoh , the builder of the first pyramid, that is worshiping the god Khnum."

"The Famine Stele is... a list... 1/3... dedicated to the lists of minerals that will be used to make the pyramid."

"In antique text what is very difficult to translate are verbs. ...[T]he verb iri-kat... means to create, to manufacture. This is the verb that is used to depict the god Khnum when he is making, when he is creating, manufacturing the ka, that is the soul of the pharaoh in eternal stone."

"[W]e find this verb iri-kat in the Famine Stele... where... Khnum is providing the minerals to Pharaoh to build his first pyramid. ...[Y]ou see iri-kat, to manufacture, and the real translation is "since creation, you are the first one who manufactures them (the minerals) to build the temples"."

"The second verb is... khusi that means to erect, to build, to construct, and you see that the verb has a determinative that is a man pounding something in a mold. So this is the making of agglomerated stone. This is the making of bricks, and this is the making of stone."

"Khusi-to build in reagglomerated stone, and this is what we get as sentence in the Famine Stele: "with these products (that are depicted in the... columns in hieroglyphs) they have built the pyramid (the royal tomb)." Which pyramid? It is the first... of ... built by ... It is the first pyramid, the step pyramid at ... made of small limestone bricks... manufactured like crude clay bricks. They took the molds, made the bricks, transported them, and laid down the pyramid. ...[T]hey used the same technology ...previously... in the monuments and... the enclosure of , the pharaoh just before... Djoser."

"So it started with the first pyramid in small bricks. They mastered their technology, improved the dimension of the blocks and they ended with the first pyramid of that is the rhomboidal, where the blocks are still... transported to the site, but... are becoming too big, and for the of Sneferu... they are cast, they are pound[ed] on site. We then arrive to the Giza Plateau where this technology was used for the Cheops, Chephren and Mykerinos pyramids."

"[W]e observe a dramatical stop of the technology. ...[T]he variation of the pyramids' volume with time... from the invention by Djoser to the Cheops pyramid, that is ...within 60 years, we have an increase in the volumes ...optimum by Cheops and Chephren, and then a dramatic plunge... of the volume ...by Mykerinos, and the others are ridiculously small. What happened?"

"[W]e can interpret... two elements... of the industrial activities. First, we may suppose that there had been exhaustion in the Sinai mines. Some minerals are used to make artificial stones, and we have texts... that show... the Sinai mines were very heavily exploited, and afterwards, no longer. Or the manufacture or lime-ash generated an ecological disaster. This is the lime... in the reaction... [with] the () [in water] to... produce the caustic soda that will start the ic reaction."

"[L]ime is very important and it has been shown by [(1990) Professor D.D.] Klemm: "...in the VI. Dynasty lime disappears nearly within the mortars. May this be interpreted as a variation in the accessibility of fuel [of wood] and consequently of economic potential and crisis?" ...He was talking about the regular lime that is calcined from limestone in a kiln. ...[W]e have not found any remains of kilns... to manufacture the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren. We need... 150,000 tons of lime, which means that we should have found remains of kilns. We did not... which means that the technology was different. ...[I]t was the one of ashes that contains lime... The ecological disaster came from the over-exploitation of wood... proven by the fact that just after the Great Pyramids, one gets frescoes... describing famines..."

"[P]lants were supplying a lot of chemicals during antiquity and even during our Middle Ages in Europe. ...If we look... at the results of the burning of wood or plants, ...we get plenty of SiO2... plenty of CaO () in beech, oak, acacia, palm trees. Plenty of alkali (K2O) in fern and bulrush... which means I am claiming... [the Egyptians] used the plants and the woods in the manufacture of these ashes... the sources of their chemicals."

"[I]f they over exploited the palm trees in the production of the ashes... then they got into an ecological disaster because... [i]f there is no more palm trees, there is no more agriculture, and... the end of the pyramid construction. ...[T]his technology, even though it was a sacred one, was dangerous."

"Just after, what we have is the starting of making a small pyramid in carved stone. ...We have here the pyramid of Ouserkaf (2460 B.C.)... just after the pyramid of Giza. It is just a heap of small stones... this one is totally destroyed and ...[the (2650 B.C.)] is still there. ...[T]his is big difference between a building made out of agglomerated stone and a small building made out of carved stone. ...It is no longer this very powerful and important technology..."

"So we started with mud bricks that were used in the enclosures during the 2nd Dynasty. They did not have stone [working, hard metal] tools so... they used mud bricks. Then... the invention of the first limestone bricks by agglomeration. The technology improved into bigger and bigger... limestone blocks, and then suddenly, 800 years later, they had tools to cut the stone. No! They returned to pyramids made of mud brick. So this is something is not capable of explaining. It is something that ic technology is capable of explaining, essentially because here we had a stop of the use of this technology to make stone."

"They turned back to mud because mud bricks is also a replica of incarnation, in the materials that belong to the Khnum divinity."

"What about the Cheops pyramid? ...We have the core, this is the mass, more than 2 million tons ...made of ...reagglomerated limestone. But ...in the ...inner ...it is made of granite ...carved stone. Why? Cheops... is Khnum Kufu... agglomerated stone. However, Pharaoh is the king of the two countries. ...[T]he pyramids must be the representation of Egypt,... which means ...the replication of agglomerated stone for the northern part ....and in the south, natural granite that is the carving technology. So we have agglomerated limestone for the core, and the King's chamber is made of split granite that is dressed [cut] ...not carved granite."

"For Chefren, same problem, the core is made of agglomerated stone, but this time... the granite... more easily ...was only for the casing of the first and second steps that is made of ...blocks of granite that are split into two and are incorporated into ...the natural step."

"Mykerinos has a core... of agglomerated limestone and the first steps were covered with a casing... also made of split granite, not dressed [not cut]."

"Based on the present scientific proof of the absence of a "geopolymeric" signature or any "synthetic" composition in the same Lauer casing stone, originally used as a "smoking gun" to support the concrete-pyramid hypothesis, the proposed geopolymer hypotheses of Davidovits and others, or any "new" hypothesis for that matter really has no practical credibility (let alone their astounding extension to both core and casing blocks, and granite/granodiorite/basalt/travertine/quartzite blocks, columns, pavements, and other architectural artifacts associated with the Great Pyramids) unless detailed and systematic research is done by a diverse group of scientists on actual pyramid samples of known provenances. A valid hypothesis must rest upon a reliable set of unquestionable data."

"Despite much reported evidence of the use of zeolitic (ic) chemistry in the ancient technologies, its promising future in the modern cast-stone technology and as innovative building materials for sustainable development, there is no evidence of use of geopolymeric cement in the pyramid stones. Based on unassailable field evidence in favor of a geologic origin for the pyramid stones, and equally convincing results of the present laboratory studies confirming the "geologic" origin of the casing stone samples from the Great Pyramid of Khufu (originally used as evidence for a man-made origin), ...the Egyptian pyramids stand as testament to the unprecedented accuracy, craftsmanship, and engineering skills of the Old Kingdom (2500 BC) stone masons!"

"Impious and factious men, after having seduced you by false declamations, and by deceitful promises, hurried you into irreligion and revolt. Since that time, a torrent of calamities has rushed in upon you from every side. You proved faithless to the God of your forefathers; and that God, justly offended, has made you feel the weight of his anger; you rebelled against the authority which he had established, and a sanguinary Despotism, and an Anarchy not less fatal, have alternately continued to harrass you with incessant rage."

"You must renounce the dominion of those treacherous and cruel usurpers who promised you happiness, but who have given you only famine and death; we wish to relieve you from their tyranny, which has so much injured you, to inspire you with the resolution of shaking it off. You must return to that holy religion which had showered down upon France the blessings of Heaven. We wish to restore its altars:—by prescribing justice to Sovereigns, and fidelity to subjects, it maintains good order, ensures the triumph of the laws, and produces the felicity of empires. You must restore that Government which, for 14 centuries, constituted the glory of France and the delight of her inhabitants; which rendered our Country the most flourishing of States, and yourselves the happiest of People:—It is our wish to restore it. Have not the various Revolutions which have occurred, augmented your distress, since the period of its destruction, and convinced you that it is the only Government that is fit for you?"

"Religious Worship must be re-established, the Hydra of Anarchy destroyed, the Regal Authority be restored to all its rights, before we can execute our intentions of opposing abuses of all kinds with invincible firmness; of seeking them with diligence, and of proscribing them with decision."

"We are Frenchmen—a title, which the crimes of a few individuals can no more degrade than the enormities of the Duke of Orleans can pollute the blood of Henry the Fourth. This title, which was ever dear to us, will also render us dear to those who bear it."

"[T]he mercy which will signalize the first days of our reign, will be invariably united with firmness: that love of our Subjects which leads us to be indulgent, teaches to be just. We shall forgive, without regret, those men, criminal as they are, who have led the People astray; but we shall treat with inexorable rigour, all those who may hereafter endeavour to seduce them from their duty. We will open our arms to those Rebels who may be induced by repentance to return to us; but if any of them should persist in rebellion, they will find that our indulgence will stop at the limits which justice prescribes, and that force will reduce those whom kindness has proved inadequate to attach."

"Misfortune has removed the veil which was placed before your eyes; the harsh lessons of experience have taught you to regret the advantages which you have lost. Already do the sentiments of Religion, which shew themselves with eclat in all the provinces of the kingdom, present to our sight the image of the glorious ages of the Church! already does the impulse of your hearts, which brings you back to your King, declare that you feel the want of being governed by a Father."

"It is not enough to groan beneath the yoke of your oppressors; you must be assisted in shaking it off. Show the world how the French, restored to their senses, can obliterate faults, in the commission of which their hearts were not concerned: Prove, that as Henry the Great has transmitted to us with his blood, his love of his people, so are you also the descendants of that people, one part of whom, always faithful to his cause, fought to restore him to his Throne; and the other part, abjuring a momentary error, bathed his feet with the tears of repentance:—Remember that you are the Grandsons of the Conquerors of Ivry and Fontain Francaise."

"My government was liable to commit errors: perhaps it did commit them. There are times when the purest intentions are insufficient to direct, or sometimes they even mislead. Experience alone could teach; it shall not be lost. All that can save France is my wish."

"My subjects have learned, by cruel trials, that the principle of the legitimacy of sovereigns is one of the fundamental bases of social order,—the only one upon which, amidst a great nation, a wise and well-ordered liberty can be established. This doctrine has just been proclaimed as that of all Europe. I had previously consecrated it be my charter, and I claim to add to that charter all the guarantees which can secure the benefits of it."

"I promise—I who never promised in vain (all Europe knows it)—to pardon to misled Frenchmen all that has passed since the day when I quitted Lille, amidst so many tears, up to the day when I re-entered Cambray, amidst so many acclamations. But the blood of my people has flowed, in consequence of a treason of which the annals of the world present no example. That treason has summoned foreigners into the heart of France. Every day reveals to me a new disaster. I owe it, then, to the dignity of my crown, to the interest of my people, to the repose of Europe, to except from pardon the instigators and authors of this horrible plot. They shall be designated to the vengeance of the laws by the two chambers, which I propose forthwith to assemble."

"Louis was by no means ill qualified to perform the part of his great ancestor Henry IV]. His understanding was excellent, his reading extensive, his temper mild and equal. He had no fanaticism political or religious. During the reign of his brother he had been one of those who wished to see the royal power restrained by constitutional checks... The excesses of the French revolution had alienated from the cause of liberty many who had once been warmly attached to it. But no such effect had been produced on the clear judgment and serene disposition of Louis... [H]istory owes him this honourable testimony, that he struggled long against the influence of bad advisers; that he yielded to it only when sickness, age, and domestic calamities had broken the force of his mind; that the best measures of his reign were those which he was himself concerned in preparing, and that his best ministers were those of his own free choice."

"Unhappily, the republicans consulted their passions rather than their reason. The king would not have been a despot if he could, and could not have been a despot if he would. Napoleon, raised to the throne of France, would have both the inclination and the means. But Louis was the representative of the emigration, and Napoleon of the revolution. The men of the revolution, with a levity inexcusable in persons conversant with public affairs, preferred a vigorous, crafty, and remorseless tyrant, with a tri-coloured cockade, to a prince whose disposition was liberal, and whose government, though by no means faultless, was the best that they had ever known, but who wore a blue riband, and claimed the throne by a hereditary title."

"Thanks to Louis's Charte France had its first real experience of parliamentary monarchy... Louis was a genuinely constitutional monarch."

"[The reign of Louis XVIII is] among the most glorious in the history of France."

"The virtues and vices of a people, at the time when any revolution happens in their government, are the measure of the liberty or slavery which they ought to expect. An heroic love for the public good, a profound reverence for the laws, a contempt of riches, and a noble haughtiness of the soul, are the only foundation of a free government; and on the contrary, indifference for the public good, a servile dread of the laws, the love of riches, and sordid grovelling sentiments are, as it were, so many chains to fetter a people in slavery."

"Despite the profoundly personal nature of the experience in the Holy Land, the pilgrimage itself unites all believers with the Churches of Jerusalem. It unites them in Christ, in faith and in their contribution to preserving the precious Christian legacy in this land. This is the grace of the Holy Places."

"In the high plateau of eastern Iran, in the oases of Serindia, in the arid wastes of Tibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria, in the ancient civilized lands of China and Japan, in the lands of the primitive Mons and Khmers and other tribes of India-China, in the countries of the Malaya-Polynesians, in Indonesia and Malay, India left the indelible impress of her high culture, not only upon religion, but also upon art, and literature, in a word, all the higher things of spirit..."

"There is an obstinate prejudice thanks to which India is constantly represented as having lived, as it were, hermetically sealed up in its age-old civilization, apart from the rest of Asia. Nothing could be more exaggerated. During the first eight centuries of our era, so far as religion and art are concerned, central Asia was a sort of Indian colony. It is often forgotten that in the early Middle Ages there existed a ‘Greater India,’ a vast Indian empire. A man coming from the Ganges or the Deccan to Southeast Asia felt as much at home there as in his own native land. In those days the Indian Ocean really deserved its name."

"Universal art has succeeded in few materialization of the Divine as powerful and also as balanced. ... the greatest representation of the pantheistic god created by the hands of man.... Never have the overflowing sap of life, the pride of force superior to everything, the secret intoxication of the inner god of things been so serenely expressed.""The three countenances of the one being are here harmonized without a trace of effort. There are few material representations of the divine principle at once as powerful and as well balanced as this in the art of the whole world. Nay, more, here we have undoubtedly the grandest representation of the pantheistic God ever made by the hand of man .. .Indeed, never have the exuberant vigor of life, the tumult of universal joy expressing itself in ordered harmony, the pride of a power superior to any other, and the secret exaltation of the divinity immanent in all things found such serenely expressed.""

"Whether he be surrounded or not by the flamming aureole of the Tiruvasi (Pabhamandala) - the circle of the world which he both fills and oversteps - the King of the Dance is all rhythm and exaltation. The tambourine, which he sounds with one of his right hands, draws all creatures into this rhytmic motion and they dance in his company. The conventionalized locks of flying hair and the blown scarfs tell of the speed of this universal movement, which crystallizes matter and reduces it to powder in turn. One of his left hands holds the fire, which animates and devours the worlds in this cosmic whirl. One of the God's feet is crushing a Titan, for "this dance is danced upon the bodies of the dead", yet one of the right hands is making a gesture of reassurance (abhayamudra), so true it is that, seen from the cosmic point of view ... the very cruelty of this universal determinism is kindly, as the generative principle of the future. And, indeed, on more than one of our bronzes the King of the Dance wears a broad smile. He smiles at death and at life, at pain and at joy, alike, or rather, his smile is death and life, both joy and pain ... From this lofty point of view, in fact, all things fall mto their place, finding their explanation and logical compulsion. Here art is the faithful interpreter of a philosophical concept. The plastic beauty of the rhythm is no more than the expression of an ideal rhythm. The very multiplicity of arms, puzzling as it may seem at first sight, is subject in tum to an inward law, each pair remaining a model of elegance in itself, so that the whole being of the Nataraja thrills with a magnificent harmony in his terrible joy. And as though to stress the point that the dance of the divine actor is indeed a sport, (lila) - the sport of life and death, the sport of creation and destruction, at once infinite and purposeless - the first of the left hands hangs limply from the arm in the careless gesture of the gajahasta (hand as the elephant's trunk). And lastly, as we look at the back view of the statue, are not the steadiness of these shoulders which uphold world, and the majesty of this Jove-like torso, as it were a symbol of the stability and immutability of substance, while the gyration of the legs in its dizzy speed would seem to symbolize the vortex of phenomena."

"Global economic growth will soon clash with physical barriers. It is physically impossible to fulfil the ideal of progressivism: the spread of techno-scientific consumer culture to ten billion people. When this dream has faded, another will emerge."

"People are weakened by the slack life they lead, by their boundless individualism, by the dreams promoted via television and advertising, and by their virtual experiences. This is what the anthropologist Arnold Gehlen has termed ‘second-hand experiences’ – socio-economic opium."

"We are thus finding ourselves in an emergency situation (what Carl Schmitt referred to as Ernstfall, a fundamental concept which he argued liberal egalitarianism never really grasped, as it interprets the world according to a providential and miraculous logic, shaped by the ascending line of progress and development)."

"[G]ames so widespread among the young distract them from dangerous activities like reading and thinking: games do away with those intolerable viruses called ideas."

"Today it is not a matter of ‘conserving’ the present or returning to a recent past that has failed, but rather of regaining possession of our most archaic roots, which is to say those most suited to the victorious life."

"In a society that considers all genuine ideas subversive, which seeks to discourage ideological imagination, and which aims to abolish thought in favour of spectacle, the main goal must be to awaken people’s consciences, raising traumatising problems and sending ideological electroshocks: shocking ideas."

"We are standing face to face with the barbarians. The enemy is no longer outside but inside the City, and the ruling ideology, paralysed, is incapable of spotting him. It stammers, overcome by its own moral disarmament, and is giving up: this is the time to seize the reins. Present society is an accomplice to the evil that is devouring it."

"We should avoid being backward-looking, concerned with restoration and reaction, for it is the last few centuries that have spawned the pox that is now devouring us. It is a matter of returning to archaic and ancestral values, while at the same time envisioning the future as something more than the extension of the present."

"The present dominant values (xenophilia, cosmopolitanism, narcissistic individualism, humanitarianism, bourgeois economism, hedonism, homophilia, permissivenes, etc.) are actually anti-values - values of devirilising weakness, since they deplete a civilization's vital energies and weaken its defensive or affirmative capacities."

"Today, the mere idea of aristocracy is incompatible with the dominant ideology. But every people needs an aristocracy. It's an integral part of human nature and can't be dispensed with. The question then is not 'For or against aristocracy?' but 'What kind of aristocracy?"

"To recreate a new aristocracy is the eternal task of every revolutionary project."

"What we strive to restore and re-animate will never come from the promises of the middle-class politicians, but will come instead from the spirit of the last Delphic prophecy, which foresaw that, ‘One day Apollo will return and it will be forever’."

"We fight for a vision of the world that is both traditional and Faustian, that allies enrootment and disinstallation, the citizen’s freedom and imperial service to the community-as-a-people, passionate creativity and critical reason, an unshakeable loyalty and an adventurous curiosity (WWF 267)"

"It’s necessary that everyone does his duty and works in his place - devotes himself to constructing a body of fundamental values - against the common enemy - in a network of active, supple, inderdependent, and confederated resistance - present on every front, at the level of Europe - with the aim of concentrating all the energies of the combatants."

"The politicians and the experts, who possess neither audacity nor imagination, reject every radical solution. They always prefer little solutions, tactical or rigged, compromises that please an electorate with cold feet, always respecting the status quo."

"We are returning to the archaic, that is, the eternal condition of mankind, which the brief parenthesis of ‘modernity’ made us forget, in other words, the rivalry of peoples, of ethnic and cultural blocs and of civilisations."

"The planet Earth is not in danger. She has millions of years to recover. It is the human species that, by degrading the ecosystem, is putting itself at risk. Nothing will be done to stem present developments, and it is already too late. The prognosis is negative."

"I know that my predictions and ideas are looked upon with horror by Parisian intellectuals, the same people who did not foresee the fall of Communism, who believe that the peaceful ‘assimilation’ of immigrants is possible, who expatiate all page long on abstruse questions, who drone out truisms on ‘democracy’ and pious asininities on the ‘republic’. I am not backing down, however: war is coming and announcing itself with unheard-of violence: war in the streets, civil war, widespread terrorist war, a generalised conflict with Islam and, very probably, nuclear conflicts. This will probably be the face of the first half of the Twenty-first century. And we have never been less prepared: invaded, devirilised, physically and morally disarmed, the prey of a culture of meaninglessness and masochistic culpability. Europeans have never in their history been as weak as at this very moment when the Great Threat appears on the horizon."

"History teaches us that humans do not change their civilisation after deliberation, or by their own willpower, but in the wake of chaos that they themselves have provoked."

"The general atmosphere of this humanity, this planet, this civilisation near its end is a generalised brawl. There is no way to prevent it, just as nothing will halt the conflict discussed above, because it is too late and we have reached the point of no return."

"After the end of the Cold War, a belief was proclaimed in a ‘New World Order’, an ‘end of history’, world peace characterised by democracy and trade (Pax Americana). Now the Twenty-first century is preparing for us perhaps the most bellicose situation in the entire history of humanity. The enormous wars of the Twentieth century will be smaller than those that we and our descendants are going to experience."

"As a result, we are witnessing the very serious phenomenon of the flight of the elites, the prelude to a process of descent into Third World status. Fleeing this stalled and overtaxed society, where the state burdens creative forces rather than helps them, millions of young brains move abroad every year. Who is replacing them? Unskilled and unproductive immigrants, who are extremely expensive, since they are for the most part takers and not givers."

"In reality, everything is happening as if this Western ‘democracy’ is slowly aligning itself with the Stalinist model, itself inspired by the despotism of the masters of the French Revolution. The ruling class of intellectuals and the media, openly hostile to populism and demagogy, opposes all direct democracy, and, especially on the Left, has sunk to cultivating contempt, suspicion and phobia of the people. Western pseudo-democracy is really an oligarchic, neo-totalitarian system."

"Human nature is martial and this trait cannot be eradicated, since it is innate."

"The fifth line of catastrophe is the rise of fanatical religious cults, principally Islam. The rise of radical Islam is the backlash to the excesses of the cosmopolitanism of modernity that wanted to impose on the entire world the model of atheist individualism, the cult of material goods, the loss of spiritual values and the dictatorship of the spectacle. In reaction to this aggression, Islam has radicalised, just as it was already becoming once again a religion of domination and conquest, in conformity with its traditions."

"Tocqueville already explained, more than 150 years ago, that democracies are short-sighted and are not systems well adapted to long-term challenges. He explained perfectly how democracies bring individualism and mass consumption. Democracies can respond to immediate threats, like war. But do democracies exist that are capable of dealing with an insidious but irreversible danger? This is an open question."

"In the Twenty-first century we are going to confront a climate shock worse than any mankind has ever experienced."

"Integration and assimilation have turned out to be complete failures. Only minorities can be assimilated, not mobs. The German people are disappearing before our very eyes. There is a change of people. You just have to take a stroll through Germany’s big cities. 75 per cent of Turks (naturalised or not, from first generation to the third) consider Germany only as an ‘economic fatherland’; they still feel that they are Turks and Muslims and watch only Turkish TV. Out of 800,000 annual births, only 278,000 births of Christian babies are recorded (1998 statistics), a terrifying 35 per cent of births."

"Whether we like it or not, Islam has entered its third phase of conquest, towards the ‘Universal Caliphate’. The first two phases happened in the Seventh to the Eleventh centuries, as well as in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth centuries. It is a question of a groundswell that the governments of Islamic countries, which are pro-Western out of temporary calculation, cannot disguise for long. Islam’s principal weapon is its demographic vigour, in the face of Western countries that are experiencing depopulation. This confrontation will cover the planet and will usually take the form of civil war, with episodes of classic war."

"The infected wound in the world’s heel is the Israeli-Palestinian question that is only going to get worse, since nothing can stop the protagonists of this inextricable situation, which opposes Judaism to Arab Islamism, from moving to extremes. By invading nearby Iraq, Washington and the ‘neo-conservatives’ followed an absurd perception of geopolitics and have only succeeded in making the infected wound a bit worse. Since the fall of the USSR, unilateral American imperialism has not stopped destabilising the world’s equilibrium, especially in the Near East. This region will soon catch fire, with an intensity that we cannot yet imagine."

"Neo-primitivism’ is an observable process of cultural involution today that consists of a return to the behaviour of primitive masses, a decline of cultural memory and the appearance of social savagery. There are countless signs of this new primitivism: the rise of illiteracy in schools, the explosion of drug use, the Afro-Americanisation of popular music, the collapse of social codes, the retreat of general culture, mastery of knowledge and historical memory among young people, the dilution of contemporary art into the nihilist brutality of less-than-nothing, brutalising the masses and stripping them of culture by audiovisual media (the ‘cathode religion’), the increase in criminal activity and barbarous behaviour (social savagery), the disappearance of a civic sense, the accelerated crumbling of homogeneous social norms and collective disciplines, the impoverishment of language, the reduction of social codes, and so on."

"Believing that a permissive society will not produce a social jungle, and that you can obtain at the same time libertarian emancipation and self-disciplined harmony. We see this drama being acted out in the shipwreck of our schools, where violence, insecurity, ignorance, and illiteracy are arising out of the illusion of progressive education, an educational method which rejects any form of discipline for its students."

"Believing that large-scale alien immigration is compatible with the ‘values of the French Republic’ and the preservation of the civilisation of the nations and peoples of Europe; and that Islam can become secular and blend in with republican values. Believing also that we can renew the working population by importing immigrants, when these immigrants are unskilled welfare recipients who become our responsibility. Imagining also that by regularising the status of masses of illegal immigrants, it will be possible to assimilate them and avoid the arrival of new masses, although we observe exactly the opposite. This is the illusion of the benefits of immigration."

"Extolling the assimilation and integration of aliens while wanting to preserve and maintain their special characteristics, their original cultures, their memories and native mores. This is the communitarian illusion, one of the most harmful of all, which is particularly cherished by ‘ethno-pluralist’ intellectuals."

"Conscience is perhaps, on the evolutionary scale, an illness and intelligence a burden. Man has lost touch with his natural survival instincts. We have not been on the Earth for a long time and it may be that, from life’s point of view, or Gaïa’s, we are a failed species, an abortive experiment; and that, especially by destroying the ecosystem that supports it, the suicidal human race is hastening its own disappearance."

"The current implicit ideology that dominates the world, especially in the West, still continues to profess, officially, the utopia inherited from the egalitarian philosophy of the Enlightenment (Eighteenth century), positivism and scientism (Nineteenth century): to create a situation where, in a few decades, some eight billion people will live on the planet with a good standard of living and democracy for all. All this resembles the billiard player who imagines that after four or five rebounds his ball will automatically fall into the hole. These professors of ballistics are playing golf, but they do not know it."

"It is a quasi-certainty that this persistent belief in progress and modernity, concepts which the political classes of the West are always jabbering about and which are totally obsolete, will never see its objectives occur. The dream will shatter into pieces. Constraining forces, a physical wall, makes this ideology resemble a mass of intellectual stupefaction and belief in miracles."

"Although the entire political class does not want to know about it, it is more than probable that the constant increase in crime taking place in Europe is a sign of the beginning of an ethnic civil war. It is politically incorrect to say this, but the conclusion is obvious. Most cases of serious crime and routine delinquency are committed by perpetrators who have immigrated from non-European countries. It is absurd to describe as ‘racism’ a statement of the clear sociological facts."

"The majority of the elites do not concern themselves with the long term, or even the middle term, in this civilisation of the here and now. The fate of future generations does not interest the decision-makers at all. They care only about their own careers."

"There has been a revolution in the way people think. They have just noticed, without daring to say it, that the old paradigm, according to which ‘the fate of humanity, individual and collective, is getting better every day, thanks to science, democratisation, and egalitarian emancipation’, is false. The age that believed it is over. This illusion has fallen. This progress (debatable anyhow according to people like Ivan Illich)[203] lasted probably less than a century. Today, the unintended consequences of mass technology are beginning to be felt: new resistant viruses, the toxicity of processed food, the exhaustion of the soil and the shrinking of the world’s agricultural production, the general and rapid degradation of the environment, the threat of the invention of new weapons of mass destruction to add to nuclear weapons, and so on. In addition, technology is entering its baroque age. The fundamental inventions were discovered by the end of the 1950s. The improvements to them made in later decades have contributed fewer and fewer concrete ameliorations, like so many useless decorative motifs added to the superstructure of a monument. The Internet has probably had fewer revolutionary effects than the telegraph or the telephone. The Internet is a significant improvement applied to a pan-communication that was already substantially realised. Techno-science is following the ‘80-20’ power law. At the beginning it takes 20 units of energy to obtain 60 units of force. Later it takes 80 units of energy to realise only 20 units of force."

"Aristotle foresaw this situation in his Politics: the struggle of the foreign-born against the native-born, with the former committing acts of injustice to conquer the latter. This is why Aristotle recommended as the first concern of politics maintaining the ethno-cultural homogeneity of the city-state in order to preserve peace and democracy."

"The inevitability of mixing has not been corroborated by the facts. We are not witnessing a ‘mixing of cultures’ in France, but quite frankly the destruction, eradication and ethnocide of European culture in favour of Americanisation and now Afro-Maghrebisation and Islamicisation."

"Under the cover of the ideology of cultural and ethnic mixing, which has never succeeded anywhere in the world, the intention is to abolish our ancestral culture, which has been judged guilty of existing and being intrinsically perverse. ‘Ethnic identity’ and its defence have been designated as Evil, as the symbol of aggression, according to Laurent Joffrin. In other words, to defend and affirm oneself is racism."

"We go forward each time either by lying and misrepresenting the objective situation, or by deliberately ignoring the parameters and changes that are taking place."

"The mixing of cultures and the abolition of ethnic identities are not on the schedule of the Twenty-first century. India, China, Black Africa, the Muslim world, whether Arab or Turkish, and so on, are affirming their identities and do not tolerate either a colonising immigration or cultural mixing on their own soil. Only the European pseudo-elites are defending the dogma of a ‘multicultural world’, which is a chimera."

"Europe is forgetting the heritage of its ancestors and the official defence of our cultural ‘patrimony’ disguises an initiative of museification, but not creation. For a cultural identity, like a biological identity, is fundamentally Archeofuturist:[103] it proceeds by a permanent rebirth of forms and generations, which begins with an original germen.[104] Permanent biological and cultural renewal and the constant maintenance of the will-to-power is the law of long-lived peoples. Identity cannot be conceived without the complementary notion of continuity. The war against ethnic and cultural identity is the key watchword of the reigning egalitarian ideology. It is a question of simultaneously abolishing our memory and our origins. The academic curricula bear witness to this. The schools now teach African fairy tales instead of our old French songs."

"They are not attaining it today and we do not see how they will reach it tomorrow. In other words, the settlement of masses of immigrants in the next twenty years is going to provoke an economic and social collapse of Europe, which will become a ‘Third World’ country. Things are changing. It is not only the ‘dreadful’ proponents of ethnic identity or ‘xenophobes’ who are saying these things, but the Institut de géopolitique des populations."

"The demographic ageing of Europe and other leading industrial countries is multiplied by the economic burden of immigration. For the time being, we can still hold out, but this will not last. The lack of active workers, the burden of retirees and the expenses of healthcare will end, from 2005-2010, with burdening European economies with debt. Gains in productivity and technological advances (the famous ‘primitive accumulation of fixed capital’, the economists’ magic cure) will never be able to match the external demographic costs. Lastly, far from compensating for the losses of the working-age native-born population, the colonising immigration Europe is experiencing involves first of all welfare recipients and unskilled workers. In addition, this immigration represents a growing expense (insecurity, the criminal economy, urban policies, etc.). An economic collapse of Europe, the world’s leading commercial power, would drag down with it the United States and the entire Western economy."

"What is this kind of vandalism? There is little public discussion of it, but vandalism is an increasingly serious scourge, as damaging as violent crime. Let us not talk only of the countless vehicles set on fire, but also of the destruction of gymnasiums and public swimming pools, acts of arson against public buildings, the massive theft of materials, the damage inflicted on public buildings, and so on. These acts have multiplied significantly over the past three years and so has their cost. Let us take the example of Marseilles: according to La Provence (7 October 2003): ‘The bill has arrived for the municipality: about 1.86 million euros a year, or 12.5 million francs’, drawn from the local taxpayers, without counting the expenses of guards and security of 140,000 euros. The local press obviously does not bother to mention the ethnic origin of these ‘vandals’ other than with the expression ‘urban youth’. This criminal activity, which is increasing all over France, represents a growing burden for the French economy."

"The second solution is communitarianism, also baptised assimilation. It is a question of a compromise, inspired by the United States and rather unclear theories of intellectual ‘ethnopluralism’, Right-wing and Left-wing. People born abroad keep their ‘culture’, but adhere to a common ‘minimum’, a global Social Contract. Society becomes a pacific kaleidoscope, united by a soft and pacifying deus ex machina. This utopian vision, Rousseauian and adolescent, still defended by learned old fogies, who flirt just a little with apartheid (whence its partisans on the extreme Right) has been tried by all the European states. The result has been total failure. There has been no ‘assimilation’ of ‘ethnic communities’ cohabiting peacefully. On the contrary, ethnic civil war is just around the corner."

"By overexploiting the Earth’s natural resources, humanity is not putting nature at risk, but nature’s provisional capacity to nourish humanity. Humanity is putting itself at risk. It is highly unlikely that in 2050 nine billion people can live in a civilisation of economic development and growth as we do today. No massive technological progress can be seen on the horizon that will lower the burden of the energy, farming and fishing levies on the capital of the Earth. The ecosystem in itself is in no way threatened. The Earth still has 4 billion years before it can regenerate all its resources — without mankind! — thanks to the chemistry of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. A ravaged ecosystem will regenerate itself very rapidly, that is, in less than 100,000 years."

"The elites who direct the Western world, the over-credentialed ‘experts’, are pulling the wool over our eyes. They possess neither strategy nor mastery of analysis and are satisfied with tactics. The real problems are never investigated. The solutions are rhetorical or electoral. The good apostles, bureaucrats with MBAs from prestigious schools, are only masters of words. No improvement is in sight. The Golem’s inexorable march continues."

"In ten, twenty, or thirty years, they will be increasingly encumbered with immigrant-colonists from the Third World, increasingly Africanised and Islamicised, prey to increasingly serious problems of security and maintaining law and order. Their native-born will be increasingly older; their educated young people will be fleeing their own countries en masse, while the need to provide subvention for the unproductive will be increasingly severe. There is surely no hope at all! And because of the ‘snowball effect’ the collapse may well occur suddenly, even by the middle of this decade."

"All respected economists know that long periods of prosperity have never been assured by markets, but by political leaders who guarantee a high-quality education, spur a dynamic demography through pro-natal policies, encourage investments by great national programs, keep taxes low, limit imports, assure a free and transparent domestic market, support national entrepreneurs, develop research and strictly control immigration."

"Online’ sales on the Internet are only an improvement of the old mail order catalogues, which were introduced in . . . 1850; they do not represent a structural change. Similarly, the Internet, multimedia cell phones, cable television, smartcards and the general computerisation of society — even genetic engineering — do not represent structural changes. They are all only developments of what already existed. There is nothing in all this to compare with inventions that really turned the world upside down, the real techno-economic metamorphoses introduced between 1860 and 1960 that revolutionised society and the framework of life: internal combustion engines, electricity, the telephone, telegraph, radio (which was more revolutionary than television), trains, cars, airplanes, penicillin, antibiotics, and so forth. The ‘new economy’ is behind us! No fundamental innovation has taken place since 1960. Computers only allow us to accomplish differently, faster and more cheaply (but with much greater fragility) what was already being done. On the other hand, the automobile, antibiotics, telecommunications and air travel were authentic revolutions that made possible what before had been impossible."

"We are victims of the psychological condition of derealisation, a loss of the sense of reality of what is happening. Our contemporaries have persuaded themselves that ‘catastrophe cannot happen’ and that this civilisation is at the same time eternal and continually getting better and better, that it will never experience a reversal, and a fortiori not a collapse. Not only is this a possibility, but it will happen, and very soon."

"This colonisation of the North by the South appears as a soft colonialism, without legal permission, relying on appeals to pity, asylum and equality. It is the ‘fox’s strategy’ (as opposed to the lion’s) noted by Machiavelli.[230] In reality, however, the coloniser, who justifies himself with the ‘modern’ Western ideology of his victim, whose values he pretends to adopt, does not share those values at all. He is anti-egalitarian, domineering (while claiming to be oppressed and persecuted), aiming at revenge and conquest. This is the clever ruse of a way of thinking that has remained archaic. To counter it, will it not be necessary to become mentally archaic again and rid ourselves of the demoralising handicap of ‘modern’ humanism?"

"The French want both a welfare state and a society with a short workweek. But where does the manna of this state come from, in socialist reality? From income"

"In France and Belgium, and soon in other countries, the number of active practitioners of Islam is soon going to surpass that of the Christian churches; the depopulation of Europe has begun as a result of the radical ethnic modification of its population;"

"The strategy must be first to contain and then to repel Islam everywhere where it expands outside its historic territory."

"The international press does not discuss the issue — it is taboo — but, since the end of apartheid and the establishment of a Black government, South Africa is slowly sinking into barbarism. The first to suffer from it are, of course, the Blacks themselves. Some of them (as happened in Rhodesia, Algeria and elsewhere) are beginning to miss ‘White power’ . . . Unemployment has tripled since the abolition of apartheid and crime rates are today the highest in the world: 12,000 murders and 50,000 rapes a year. 95 per cent of the victims are Black. Heavily guarded by militias, the wealthy Whites live in the cities, surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences. The situation is paradoxical but explicable. Since the inauguration of Black power the difference in the standard of living between Blacks and Whites has increased by 10 per cent to the advantage of the Whites and de facto apartheid has become much more marked than under the old de jure apartheid."

"1) First of all, demographic decline. No one seems to be concerned with this fundamental fact. The burden of older people and the lack of young people are automatically going to produce the following phenomena, which are already beginning but are only going to speed up: the impossibility of paying for retirements and social benefits, the brain drain, and a shortage of creators and innovators. Taxes and burdens, like public debt, will keep on growing all the way to a breakdown. The policies of the European states are not taking these facts into account. Bankruptcy looms. Countries whose population is ageing and declining can no longer be sure of a minimal level of innovation."

"Uncontrolled immigration from abroad, which is composed of welfare recipients (many more ‘refugees’ and illegal immigrants than workers) and not of wealth creators who pay for benefits, constitutes a tidal wave that will not be sustainable in the middle term. The ‘integration’ or ‘assimilation’ in which we pretend to believe cannot work because the populations to be integrated and assimilated are too numerous and there is no control over the human deluge. Europe is in the process of undergoing — without the consent of its indigenous peoples — a massive substitution of populations, which is taking place for the first time in its history. The new populations that are settling here are importing a ‘Third World culture’, that is, they are impoverishing Europe. It is politically incorrect to mention these facts, but we must talk about them all the same."

"Saint-Étienne concludes, ‘I urgently call for the creation of a parliamentary commission to establish the “balance sheet of skills” of immigration. . . . If this phenomenon were to continue for five or ten years, France would soon become the only major industrialised country “on the path to underdevelopment.”’ He concludes, ‘Refusing to look facts in the face will bring the country to suicide."

"A prosperous economy rests on a high level of research and investment in order to preserve the environment, develop tourism and state of the art industries, maintain the national patrimony, transmit its cultural traditions and identity, innovate, and so on. Especially in France, the trend is quite the opposite."

"It is absolutely fascinating to see how far educated, intelligent, self-proclaimed feminist women end up submitting to the authority of psychotic and mediocre men. It is as if these highly evolved women struggled intellectually with machismo but, in their daily life, end up submitting to a man. Women who have been beaten, even raped, forgive their attackers. One must ask whether they do not love them because of their brutality."

"Cases of men submitting to women exist, but are far more rare. What is extraordinary is that many of these submissive women who allow their lives to be degraded are economically independent and have no need of a man. The explanation of female submission by violence or economic dependence (as in traditional societies) does not hold water, since mistreated women today could easily take off. One explanation could be that women tolerate loneliness less well than men, and that they end, even after a free and emancipated youth, by needing a guardian — even if a disagreeable and hateful one. One often gets the impression that the idea of freedom is less important for women than the fear of loneliness."

"The principle purpose of marriage is perverted as soon as one assigns ‘love’ as its ultimate end. Reasoning in an Aristotelian manner, one could say that love and sex are a component of marriage but not at all its necessary telos. Sex and love are means that have been inappropriately transformed into ends. The principle telos of marriage is the construction of a lineage by means of procreation, and not simply the union of two beings who ‘love and desire each other’, even if romantic desire may have its place. A lasting couple that forms a family, the building block of a nation, is not based on ‘love’ in the adolescent sense, nor on a passing sex fantasy, but on a partnership which evolves with time, based on ethnic, cultural and social commonality; on shared values and a family strategy."

"Based on the balancing act of the golden mean, bourgeois marriage mixed moderate but continuing sexual attraction, a mutual social and economic interest in living together, respect for the wife, a will to create a lineage, significant socio-cultural similarity, hypocrisy for dissimulating and managing adulterous liaisons (hence the importance of legal prostitution), and the building up of a patrimony to be transmitted. When the couple gets old, this leads to a habitual tenderness much stronger than the passionate and ephemeral simulation of today’s young couples."

"No man can have a double identity."

"Throughout history, any general lack of firmness and virility has acted as a magnet for aggression and invasions, particularly when it comes to peoples who, for ethno-cultural reasons, respect the language of force and despise that of commiseration above all else."

"Of course, they practice a purely socioeconomic adhesion to European civilisation, since the latter offers them so many advantages, but would not give up their ethnic identity and their loyalty to the motherland for anything in the world."

"Speaking of his own country, Konstantinos Stephanidis, Member of the Greek Parliament, had this to say in May 1999: Today, we all realise that, as a result of its limited demographic growth, Greece is doomed to become a small twenty-first-century country comprised of a majority of old and rich people, a country surrounded by an ocean of poverty-stricken youths. In 10 years’ time, the Greek population will most probably still be stagnating at 10 million people that enjoy a Western standard of living, but the Turks will have reached a total of 80 million by then. In other words, we are talking about the presence of 10 million affluent individuals surrounded by 100 million poor ones, almost all of them Muslim. Therein is the real problem that Greece faces today. What is true of Greece also applies to the whole of Europe, but on an even larger scale. Not only are we being invaded from the inside, but are also surrounded by young and prolific countries which covet what we have."

"At first, the Muslim community, in its minority position, settles in a foreign land and practices Dar al-Sulh, meaning ‘momentary peace’. This happens because the infidel, in his blindness and naïvety, allows Islamic proselytism on his own soil, without requiring any reciprocity in Muslim lands. This is the stage that we are currently experiencing"

"Has anyone given the following facts any thought? The Poles, Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, and even Asians who began immigrating to France in huge numbers back in the 1960s have never required any expensive ‘political integration’ in order to participate in our country’s economic life, fit into its social fabric, or to evade a life of crime."

"With Africans and Maghrebians, even heavy social assistance cannot achieve their integration or encourage them to take charge of their own lives. There is a problem here. It is obvious that the dominant ideology cannot admit that the reason why integration is impossible is neither social nor economic, nor is it financial, but ethnical."

"Islam does not rely on speculations, doubts, questions, and abstractions, but on principles. By definition, these are intangible. Since Europeans no longer have any principles themselves, they are at risk of becoming victims of Islam while simultaneously being fascinated by it. To gain the respect of Muslims, Europeans need to counter Islamic principles with equally intransigent ones."

"They must, above all, avoid displaying any signs of weakness and show no tolerance towards them. Uncompromisingly, we must all remain determined in our position: it is not coexistence with Islam that Europe needs to prepare for in connection to its conscious and active minorities, but its future expulsion."

"Here is the theory invented by Tocqueville. ... The lighter a yoke, the more it seems insupportable; what exasperates is not the crushing burden but the impediment; what inspires to revolt is not oppression but humiliation. The French of 1789 were incensed against the nobles because they were almost the equals of the nobles; it is the slight difference that can be appreciated, and what can be appreciated that counts. The eighteenth-century middle class was rich, in a position to fill almost any employment, almost as powerful as the nobility. It was exasperated by this “almost” and stimulated by the proximity of its goal; impatience is always provoked by the final strides."

"War without fire is worth nothing—like sausages without mustard."

"We no longer exercise our critical faculties as soon as we like the thesis put forward. The role of a scientific council is to act as a lighthouse and beacon, to enlighten the political authorities, who must not make decisions without taking account of what the scientists say, i.e. not do what Donald Trump does."

"I'm a great believer in popularising science, but I've noticed that it's not very effective [...]. We treat our knowledge a bit like beliefs, and that creates a lot of confusion."

"Journalist: [...] in Italy a scandal was caused by the dossier [...] Majorana and Eichmann, the secret in a photograph, in which the hypothesis that the physicist, after having joined Heisenberg in Germany, worked on the creation of the Nazi atomic bomb took shape. [...] Majorana, or rather someone who looked a lot like him, is portrayed next to Eichmann escaping to Argentina. It seems to me that you discard the Argentinian track..."}} I did not even raise this thesis because it seemed to me at least outlandish. After all, how can one support a thesis based solely on the alleged similarity of a photo taken thirteen years after Majorana's disappearance? On the other hand, there is no trace of Majorana in the German archives concerning his work on the atomic bomb - which are open to all and can be consulted -. And the Italian physicist's name did not even come up in 1945, when German scientists arrested in Germany were transferred to a secret residence in England, and conversations recorded without their knowledge for several months."

"Journalist: Does he share the opinion of Sciascia [...] that "for others science was a matter of will, for him a matter of nature"? To write Il était sept fois la révolution, I studied a lot the works of the founding fathers of quantum physics: Einstein, Pauli, Dirac, Schrödinger, Heisenberg... In all of them one can feel moments of discouragement, doubt, fatigue, alternating with moments of enthusiasm of intellectual joys. In Majorana, on the contrary, things have the air of advancing continuously, without obstacles, without the onset of any Eureka! Physics seems to flow through him with nothing to hold it back, without barriers."

"Majorana thought that the notion of symmetry allows one to grasp what is permanent in the flow of phenomena...In the world of elementary particles, interesting symmetries operate within spaces that only mathematicians know how to represent and that are distinct from three-dimensional physical space. These symmetries are directly related to the dynamic properties of physical systems, i.e. the way they behave under the effect of a force. And it may prove very fruitful to begin by identifying the fundamental symmetries that govern phenomena because they are at the source of the invariant quantities or structures that are capable of revealing deep reality."

"A l’erreur opposons la vérité, à la foi l’évidence, la science aux religions. Les propagandistes religieux ne font connaître aux enfants qu’une seule doctrine. Faisons-leur connaître toutes les doctrines, non seulement dans leur état actuel, mais dans leur genèse et dans leur développement. Instruisons-les des ressemblances et des analogies qu’elles ont entre elles, et aussi des ressemblances et des analogies qu’ont entre eux leurs fondateurs et leurs propagateurs. Puis laissons-les libres de choisir entre les hypothèses, et si aucune des anciennes ne les satisfait, libres d’en imaginer de nouvelles."

"Le juif Joshua, que les chrétiens appellent Jésus-Christ, était un dégénéré vésanique, et, selon toute appatence, un mélancolique à délire systématisé. Vous savez, Messieurs, qu’en Orient les fous ont eu de tout temps un caractère sacré, et qu’on rencontre encore dans l’Inde et en Égypte des saints très analogues aux saints catholiques de la décadence latine et du moyen âge, les uns et les autres n’étant que psychopathes. Si les saints sont devenus si rares dans le monde civilisé, c’est qu’on les enferme. J’ai eu l’occasion d’entendre récemment dans un asile un délirant mystique d’une éloquence rare, et qui eût eu, à n’en pas douter, un succès considérable au temps des apôtres. Qu’on ait fait un Dieu de Joshua, comme on fit un prophète de Mohammed, lequel était un épileptique et un halluciné, rien là qui soit étonnant pour qui est au courant des mœurs orientales."

"Comme beaucoup de dégénérés, Ieschou n'avait pas le sentiment de la famille. Son indifférence à l'égard de sa mère eut pour résultat de placer la pauvre paysanne au dernier rang dans sa suite."

"Les propos tenus par les hystériques ou les fous délirants sont tenus par les démons, avec lesquels Ieschou entre eu convcrsation."

"Son temperament anarchiste sa haine des riches les lui fait écarter du divin séjour. L'un d'eux s'en étant allé tout triste parce qu'il lui avait ordonné de vendre ses biens et d'en donner le produit aux pauvres, il s'écrie."

"La foi en leschou est si bien la condition essentielle pour entrer dans le royaume, que bons et mauvais y seront admis indscintement, puurvu qu'ils l'aient cru et suivi, ou qu'ils aient cru Iohanan le Baptiseur affirmant la mission du Nazaréen."

"Ce qui signifie: "Laisse ceux-là enterrer leurs morts qui, ayant refusé de me suivre, ne posséderont point la vie éternelle.""

"Pour être sûr qu'on n'aime que lui, il exige qu'on haïsse les siens et qu'on se haïsse soi-mèmc, ordre monstrueux qui est encore suivi à la lettre par les demi-fous de nos monastères."

"Il se livrait constamment au prosélytisme et avait des explosions de fanatisme contre les profanes, les sceptiques et les incrédules."

"Dieu est d'ordinaire pour les gros escadrons contre les petits."

"L'absence est à l'amour ce qu'est au feu le vent; Il éteint le petit, il allume le grand."

"Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, Il faut aimer ce que l'on a."

"Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit."

"Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba dolet."

"Assuredly no one of us would ever propose to retain in France the fatal race of kings; we all know but too well that dynasties have never been anything else than rapacious tribes who lived on nothing, but human flesh. It is necessary completely to reassure the friends of liberty. We must destroy this talisman, whose magic power is still sufficient to stupefy many a man. I move accordingly that you sanction by a solemn law the abolition of royalty."

"Kings are in the moral order what monsters are in the physical. Courts are the workshops of crimes, the lair of tyrants. The history of kings is the martyrology of nations."

"The more denuded a man is of virtues, the more he seeks to surround himself with frivolous distinctions. [...] But since pride unfortunately is the most tenacious of passions, the reign of prejudice has been prolonged, for man seems not to be able to attain truth until he has exhausted all of error's possibilities."

"Science has been separated from wisdom in the sense that the organization of means has become independent of the reflection on ends. In all other cultures, for example in those of India, China, Islam (so far as Asia is concerned), one recognized two uses of reason: one proceeded from cause to effect and permitted adaptation to nature, and the other proceeded from ends to ends, from intermediate ends to higher ends, and gave direction to life. Western thought has let the second use of reason atrophy. Cut off from wisdom, occidental reason has become infirm, mutilated and monstrous, indifferent to all human finality."

"The world reduced to a market (the ‘monotheism of the market’, according to Roger Garaudy's accurate formulation) is indeed a senseless world, completely abandoned by God, regardless of the fact that crowds of religious dignitaries are often present at public ceremonies dominated by the economic, political and, above all, military leaders of the planet."

"It used to be the custom in France to spend the whole of the summer in the country and the winter in town. By , or, at the latest, at the end of December, the chateaux were deserted, and the hotels of the filled with fashionable inhabitants. This is no longer the case. People remain in their country houses until nearly the end of winter, and though the Paris season encroaches a little on the spring, it is over by the beginning of June, and the time devoted to social enjoyment thus considerably abridged. Whether this change is for the best is a question not easily solved."

"The doctor rubbed his spectacles and opened his snuff-box with a great noise, as the young girl made the light repast, which soon brought the color to her cheek again, or, at least, the usual color, for her face was, ordinarily, very pale. Large eyes, grave and gentle, gray rather than blue, shadowed by lashes as black as her hair, made her face singular and striking. Yet, in spite of this singularity, in spite of her paleness, the delicacy of her features, and her slender figure with its willowy grace, if one wished to describe in two words the general impression produced by the aspect of Fleurange d'Yves, one would have chosen these: simplicity and strength."

"Le Récit d’une sœur, qui est pour la plus grande partie la correspondance authentique et intime d’une famille bien connue, fit grand bruit. Peu de livres de femme se sont vendus à un aussi grand nombre d’exemplaires. « Ce livre est un calice de douleurs ! » Elle a été très critiquée par Armand de Pontmartin et Barbey d’Aurevilly. Ce dernier aurait voulu que le Récit d’une sœur fût l’unique livre de Mme Craven. « La plume qui l’a écrit devrait être brisée, a-t-il dit, comme, dans certains pays, le verre avec lequel on a trinqué avec le roi. Le verre funèbre plein de délices et d’angoisses dans lequel Mme Craven a bu à la mémoire des siens ne devait plus servir à personne. Est-ce que le roi de Thulé, après avoir pleuré dans sa coupe, ne la jeta pas à la mer ? » The Tale of a Sister, which is for the most part the authentic and intimate correspondence of a well-known family, caused a great stir. Few women's books have sold such a large number of copies. "This book is a chalice of sorrows!" It was criticized in depth by and . The latter would have liked the Tale of a Sister to be Mrs. Craven's only book. "The pen that wrote it should be broken," he said, "like, in some countries, the glass with which one toasts with the king. The funeral glass full of delights and anguish from which Mrs. Craven drank in memory of her family should no longer be of use to anyone. Did not the , after weeping in his cup, throw it into the sea?""

"... one feels compelled to admit the justice of Paul Bourget's classification when he places Mrs. Craven in the pious school of novelists. ... From the material point of view her efforts were happily very successful, some of her stories having had an extensive sale. Yet it would be a daring speculation to assert either that she created her reading public or robbed the realistic writers of theirs. Most probably she wrote for a public which already existed—the pious Catholic world in France—and in so doing has laid herself open to the stigma of having "written books for girls." The best which can be said of Mrs. Craven's novels is, that they are conventional romances written by a clever woman."

"Qui va plus tost que la fumée, Si ce n'est la flamme allumée? Plus tost que la flamme? le vent: Plus tost que le vent? c'est la femme: Quoi plus? rien, elle va devant Le vent, la fumée et la flamme."

"It is evident that the Chinese attitude of mind is undergoing a great change through contact with Western ideas and learning; what is less evident is that deeper layers of the nation have not been reached."

"The distinctive feature of Medieval philosophy, which reached its peak in scholasticism, is the effort to use reason to demonstrate a set of metaphysical doctrines capable of connecting, as far as possible, Hellenic philosophy of nature and Christian theology. While Greek philosophy started from the idea of a nature entirely permeated by the divine and subsequently fell due to the dissociation of these two principles, Scholasticism, for which the divine is essentially infinite personality and perfection, first radically separates God and nature and grants the latter only the attributes indispensable to a contingent existence. Nothing then prevents us from conceiving of perfect divine spirituality as coexisting with imperfect nature. Transcendent with respect to things, God is not affected by their imperfection. And the very imperfection of nature provides reason with the starting point for the arguments by which it establishes the philosophical truths implied in supernatural truths. Thus, the conditions of a natural philosophy were reconciled with those of a religious philosophy. (La scolastica, pp. 10-11)"

"Mysticism consists, according to a beautiful definition I find in Plotinus], in seeing with closed eyes [...] in seeing with the eyes of the soul, while the eyes of the body are closed. The essential phenomenon of mysticism is what is called ecstasy, a state in which, with all communication with the external world interrupted, the soul has the sense of communicating with an internal object, which is the infinite being, God. (La psicologia del misticismo, pp. 58-59)"

"[...] the person of Ravaisson himself is like the act, the fulfilment of the thought which, in his written philosophy, aspires to realise itself. He immediately distinguished himself by a grace, a distinction, a smiling serenity that never disappeared. He attracted people with his good grace and impressed them with his fundamental affinity with the noble and the great. He spoke with absolute simplicity and probity, concerned only with thinking correctly and expressing his thoughts faithfully and naturally, without ever allowing a word of effect or rhetorical artifice to enter his mind. He spoke about everything and was interested in the small pleasures of the world as well as the great questions of philosophy and life. But in all things he saw the link between the ideal and the real. Like the ancient Greeks, he saw the divine in everything. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, pp. 115-116)"

"Above all, [Félix Ravaisson] was a writer. He expressed himself in broad, flexible, simple and wise phrases, elegant and solid with an air of abandon, and the logical relationships between ideas and the aesthetic harmony that coordinates them and the creative action that brings forth the details, conditions and elements from the whole and from the beginning. His style is the very soul grasped in his inner life and in the secret movement through which it gives itself and spreads. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, p. 116)"

"The whole person of Ravaisson was the manifestation of one unique thing: his intimate union of thought and heart with spiritual and eternal realities. Deep down, he did not believe in death because he was convinced that what passes away has its being only in what remains. He saw things and people not only in their ideas, like Plato, but in their source, which is infinite love, superior to the Idea and unfailing. He not only professed his doctrine with conviction, but lived it. (La filosofia di F. Ravaisson, p. 116)"

"A philosopher is a man who compares the knowledge and beliefs of men in order to investigate their relationships; therefore, we want to know how Plato or Leibniz conceived these relationships; Furthermore, since a philosopher is not a seer to whom truth is revealed in a flash, but a patient researcher who reflects, criticises, doubts, hesitates, and surrenders only to obvious reasons, we want to know by what methodical means, by what observations and reasoning our author arrived at his conclusions. For this is not a matter of unconscious and mechanical work of his brain, but of a conscious and deliberate effort to overcome the limits of his own personality, to think universally, and to discover the truth. (Ch. I, p. 7)"

"[...] the history of philosophy deals with the doctrines conceived by philosophers, not philosophy in general in its entirety, nor the psychological evolution of each thinker in particular; therefore, its essential task, to which all others are subordinate, consists in penetrating and understanding doctrines, explaining them as well as possible, as the author himself would do, and presenting them in accordance with the spirit and, to a certain extent, the style of their author. (Ch. I, pp. 7-8)"

"Socrates' condemnation of ancient physics has its root cause in the ideas inherent in his own nation. Greece could not fully identify with the speculations on the principles of things to which the physiologists had gone. Without doubt, the power of reasoning, the ingenious subtlety, and the marvellous sense of harmony employed by these profound investigators were its heritage; but the immediate application of these spiritual qualities to material objects so foreign to man was contrary to the genius of an essentially political race, especially fond of fine words and fine deeds. (Ch. II, p. 22)"

"Boutroux [...] believes he is criticising science, but instead he criticises a puppet of formal logic, as if the logical power of thought were exhausted in the principle of identity, A is A; but conversely, he establishes a dogmatism worse than the scientific one (because it is philosophical) by considering all reality as a posteriori of experience. (Guido De Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea, Editori Laterza, Bari, 19648, part II, Ch. IV, p. 192)"

"Scientific laws, says Boutroux, result from the collaboration of the spirit and things; they are the product of the activity of the spirit applied to a foreign matter; and they represent the effort that the spirit makes to establish a coincidence between things and itself. But what coincidence is this, where it is not known with what thought must coincide? He rightly says that the highest forms of reality cannot be resolved into the lowest; but then he resolves into the lowest... precisely thought, that is, the very thought that alone can make us understand progress from below to above. Consequently, progress is clouded in the void of contingency, and all forms of reality become things in themselves, which thought can do nothing but shadow in its concepts, trying in vain to adapt to them. (Guido De Ruggiero, La filosofia contemporanea, Editori Laterza, Bari, 19648, Part II, Ch. IV, p. 191)"

"The main core around which Boutroux's thought revolves is the problem of science and the meaning of natural laws. From 1874, the year of his thesis, “De la Contingence des lois de la Nature”, until his death, i.e. for just under half a century, Boutroux developed and elaborated his critique of science, always insisting on it and basing his theories on freedom and religion on it, which form, one might say, the positive part of his philosophy. (Ugo Spirito, Il pragmatismo nella filosofia contemporanea, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze, 1921, cap. II, p. 142)"

"In the continuous development of nature and spirit, Boutroux believes it is impossible to establish anything definitive that has eternal value. Man, therefore, who is the greatest exponent of progress, does not know what his progress is tending towards; he does not know, therefore, whether his progress is true progress. Everything disappears into the indeterminate, into confusion, and the sceptical conclusion presents itself as compelling. But no: Boutroux, like James before him, does not lose himself in negation at this point and wants to save himself from scepticism. And so negation itself is transformed into affirmation. It is precisely the indistinct, the confused that contains the reason for life: in it is love, faith, the ideal; in it is that powerful impulse that moves the poet, the artist, the scientist himself, for science would be nothing without faith. But religion thus attained is an empty religion, and the ideal thus established is an ideal that fades into nothingness. (Ugo Spirito, Il pragmatismo nella filosofia contemporanea, Vallecchi Editore, Firenze, 1921, cap. II pp. 150-151)"

"He used to say that a philosophical system is a living thought; and, in truth, he not only taught his philosophy, but lived it, felt it, spread it and defended it in books and with words, in Europe and America, regardless of hardship, with all the ardour of a missionary."

"Poor health, which worsened with the passing of the years, forced him from his youth to withdraw into himself, to seek in his own spirit the best source of joy. Few penetrated his moral intimacy. But just seeing him like that, tall, pale, thin, emaciated, it was easy to guess what a rich inner life was enclosed in that frail body, and how the world of the spirit must have been the only real world for him."

"For many years, the clergy of the parish of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont cherished the memory of that pale teenager, who never missed divine services and zealously fulfilled all religious practices. In turn, Boutroux never forgot the church of his first communion, the church where his spirit had been nourished and strengthened in those religious convictions that were to form the basis and crowning glory of his philosophical views. As an adult, he returned there more than once to recall the sweet memories of his younger years and to meditate at the tomb of Blaise Pascal."

"On the one hand, then, in the reproductive functions proper—menstruation, defloration, pregnancy, and parturition—woman is biologically doomed to suffer. Nature seems to have no hesitation in administering to her strong doses of pain, and she can do nothing but submit passively to the regimen prescribed. On the other hand, as regards sexual attraction, which is necessary for the act of impregnation, and as regards the erotic pleasure experienced during the act itself, the woman may be on equal footing with the man."

"Revolutions are not effected of a sudden. Christianity accepts society as it is, influencing it for its transformation through, and only through, individual souls."

"Thérèse of Lisieux was one of the sources of inspiration for the philosopher Henri Bergson during the final stage of his search, in which he found God thanks to the testimony of mystics."

"Christ does not even grant her [to Mary] the satisfactions of motherhood according to the flesh, however legitimate they may be."

"Mary shared the obscure condition of faith that is that of the other redeemed."

"It cannot be said that Mary's Redemption is of a different kind from ours, because it is the same redemption as Christ's, but in its supreme fulfillment and with its own modes of anticipation and perfection."

"If she is our queen, we too will reign with Christ; Mary is not superior to us except in being closer to us."

"Through the apparitions at Lourdes, Our Lady wanted to restore in us a love for the poor and for poverty, a love that is ingenious and liberating."

"Conversion: this is the word that most specifically expresses the meaning of pilgrimage."

"The events at Lourdes present an order, a harmony that becomes increasingly apparent as one delves deeper."

"Mass and the Body of Christ have become the very center of pilgrimage to Lourdes."

"The mid-19th century saw the triumph of the reign of money over the medieval reign of honor and traditions."

"The prayer of Bernadette is contagious."

"The Virgin [Mary] is the one in whom no sin has diminished love."

"Lourdes does not disappoint, even though miracles remain the exception there."

"We sinners oscillate dangerously between harshness and complicity towards others."

"There is no true love for the sinner without hatred for his sin."

"One cannot understand the sinner through sin, because sin is not a positive technique: in its essence it is deprivation, absence, nothingness; it is sin to the exact extent that it decapitates the good of the act performed. It is therefore not a factor of understanding but of obscurity."

"If heaven chooses what does not exist according to the world, it is not for the gratuitous pleasure of mocking the world."

"One is capable of mercy to the extent that one knows one is the object of mercy."

"For the clergy he was a severe disciplinarian, but was himself foremost with the example of a holy life."

"[T]he desire of bearing sovereign rule and authority respecteth neither blood nor amity, nor caring for virtue, as being wholly without respect of laws, or majesty divine; for it is not possible that he which invadeth the country and taketh away the riches of another man without cause or reason should know or fear God."

"[W]here shall a man find a more wicked and bold woman than a great personage once having loosed the bands of honor and honesty? [...] But I will not stand to gaze and marvel at women, for that there are many which seek to blaze and set them forth, in which their writings they spare not to blame them all for the faults of some one or few women. But I say that either nature ought to have bereaved man of that opinion to accompany with women, or else to endow them with such spirits as that they may easily support the crosses they endure, without complaining so often and so strangely, seeing it is their own beastliness that overthrows them. For if it be so that a woman is so imperfect a creature as they make her to be, and that they know this beast to be so hard to be tamed as they affirm, why then are they so foolish to preserve them, and so dull and brutish as to trust their deceitful and wanton embracings?"

"Hamlet, in this sort counterfeiting the madman, many times did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might procced, for that standing by the fire and sharpening sticks like poniards and pricks, one in smiling manner asked him wherefore he made those little staves so sharp at the points? "I prepare," saith he, "piercing darts and sharp arrows to revenge my father's death.""

"[T]he nature of all young men, especially such as are brought up wantonly, is so transported with the desires of the flesh, and entereth so greedily into the pleasures thereof, that it is almost impossible to cover the foul affection, neither yet to dissemble or hide the same by art or industry, much less to shun it. What cunning or subtlety soever they use to cloak their pretense, seeing occasion offered, and that in secret, especially in the most enticing sin that reigneth in man, they cannot choose (being constrained by voluptuousness) but fall to natural effect and working."

"[T]he counselor entered secretly into the Queen's chamber and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the Queen and Hamlet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, and fearing if he should speak severely and wisely to his mother touching his secret practices he should be understood and by that means intercepted, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to crow like a cock, beating with his arms in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings, upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat, a rat," and presently drawing his sword thrust it into the hangings, which done, pulled the counselor half dead out by the heels, made an end of killing him, and, being slain, cut his body in pieces, which he caused to be boiled and then cast it into an open vault or privy, that so it might serve for food to the hogs."

"Is this the part of a queen and daughter to a king? To live like a brute beast and like a mare that yieldeth her body to the horse that hath beaten her companion away, to follow the pleasure of an abominable king that hath murdered a far more honester and better man than himself in massacring Horvendile, the honor and glory of the Danes, who are now esteemed of no force nor valor at all, since the shining splendor of knighthood was brought to an end by the most wickedest and cruellest villain living upon earth? [...] O Queen Geruthe, it is the part of a bitch to couple with many and desire acquaintance of divers mastiffs; it is licentiousness only that hath made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king your husband and my father. [...] It is not the part of a woman, much less of a princess, in whom all modesty, courtesy, compassion, and love ought to abound, thus to leave her dear child to fortune in the bloody and murderous hands of a villain and traitor. Brute beasts do not so, for lions, tigers, ounces, and leopards fight for the safety and defense of their whelps; and birds that have beaks, claws, and wings resist such as would ravish them of their young ones."

"It toucheth not the matter herein to discover the parts of divination in man, and whether this Prince, by reason of his over-great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared, like the philosophers who, discoursing of divers deep points of philosophy, attribute the force of those divinations to such as are Saturnists by complexion, who oftentimes speak of things which, their fury ceasing, they then already can hardly understand who are the pronouncers."

"I mean not to relate that which divers men believe, that a reasonable soul becometh the habitation of a meaner sort of devils, by whom men learn the secrets of things natural; and much less do I account of the supposed governors of the world feigned by magicians, by whose means they brag to effect marvelous things."

"As touching magical operations, I will grant them somewhat therein, finding divers histories that write thereof, and that the Bible maketh mention, and forbiddeth the use thereof: yea, the laws of the gentiles and ordinances of emperors have been made against it in such sort, that Mahomet, the great heretic and friend of the devil, by whose subtleties he abused most part of the east countries, hath ordained great punishments for such as use and practice those unlawful and damnable arts."

"If vengeance ever seemed to have any show of justice, it is then when piety and affection constraineth us to remember our fathers unjustly murdered, as the things whereby we are dispensed withal, and which seek the means not to leave treason and murder unpunished; seeing David, a holy and just king, and of nature simple, courteous, and debonair, yet when he died he charged his son Solomon (that succeeded him in his throne) not to suffer certain men that had done him injury to escape unpunished. Not that this holy king (as then ready to die, and to give account before God of all his actions) was careful or desirous of revenge, but to leave this example unto us, that where the prince or country is interested, the desire of revenge cannot by any means (how small soever) bear the title of condemnation, but is rather commendable and worthy of praise; for otherwise the good Kings of Judah, nor others had not pursued them to death, that had offended their predecessors, if God himself had not inspired and engraven that desire within their hearts. Hereof the Athenian laws bear witness, whose custom was to erect images in remembrance of those men that, revenging the injuries of the commonwealth, boldly massacred tyrants and such as troubled the peace and welfare of the citizens."

"[T]he diversities of opinions among that multitude of people being many, yet every man ignorant what would be the issue of that tragedy, none stirred from thence, neither yet attempted to move any tumult, every man fearing his own skin, and, distrusting his neighbor, esteeming each other to be consenting to the massacre."

"Who was ever sorrowful to behold the murderer of innocents brought to his end, or what man weepeth to see a just massacre done upon a tyrant, usurper, villain, and bloody personage?"

"I beseech you that shall read this history not to resemble the spider, that feedeth of the corruption that she findith in the flowers and fruits that are in the gardens, whereas the bee gathereth her honey out of the best and fairest flower she can find. For a man that is well brought up should read the lives of whoremongers, drunkards, incestuous, violent, and bloody persons, not to follow their steps and so to defile himself with such uncleanness, but to shun palliardise, abstain the superfluities and drunkenness in banquets, and follow the modesty, courtesy, and continency that recommendeth Hamlet in this discourse, who, while other made good cheer, continued sober; and where all men sought as much as they could to gather together riches and treasure, he, simply accounting riches nothing comparable to honor, sought to gather a multitude of virtues, that might make him equal to those that by them were esteemed as gods; having not as then received the light of the Gospel, that men might see among the barbarians, and them that were far from the knowledge of one only God, that nature was provoked to follow that which is good, and those forward to embrace virtue, for that there was never any nation, how rude or barbarous soever, that took not some pleasure to do that which seemed good, thereby to win praise and commendations, which we have said to be the reward of virtue and good life. I delight to speak of these strange histories, and of people that were unchristened, that the virtue of the rude people may give more splendor to our nation, who, seeing them so complete, wise, prudent, and well advised in their actions, might strive not only to follow (imitation being a small matter), but to surmount them, as our religion surpasseth their superstition, and our age more purged, subtle, and gallant, than the season wherein they lived and made their virtues known."

"Although Champollion was an avowed revolutionary and an enthusiastic Bonapartist, one of his earliest discoveries discredited some of the theories of Dupuis’s supporters, and he and his decipherment were therefore welcomed by the Church and the Restoration nobility. On the other hand, his championing of Egypt over Greece combined with his political beliefs to infuriate Hellenist and Indianist scholars, who continued to do all they could to block his academic career."

"Science does not aim to cover exhaustively the whole of reality, but to construct systems and concepts which will perhaps — and it is a big perhaps — allow man to act on the world."

"Le désir de s'enrichir est leur passion dominante, et à vrai dire leur seule passion."

"Les hommes font les lois. Les femmes font les mœurs."

"The standing armies, while a burden on the people, are inadequate for the achievement of great and decisive results in war, and meanwhile the mass of the people, untrained in arms, degenerates....The hegemony over Europe will fall to that nation which...becomes possessed of manly virtues and creates a national army."