"There was just such a man when I was young — an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people."
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Responding to Sir Kay's suggestion that if a King found "human beings were too wicked or too stupid to accept his way, he might have to force it on them, in their own interests by the sword", in The Once and Future King (1938 - 1958) by T. H. White, The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939), Ch. 8
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Merlin
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