Philosophers From England

"To say that the law of force is abandoned because force is regular, unopposed, and beneficially exercised, is to say that day and night are now such well-established institutions that the sun and moon are mere superfluities."

"Stephen's book [Liberty, Equality, Fraternity] is the finest exposition of conservative thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is a robust polemic, sometimes extravagant in its epigrams, but tinged throughout by that belief in the religious basis of human society which has been the strength of conservatism from Burke to to-day. It is a frank and die-hard statement of the ideas dominant among the educated and governing classes of English society."

"I did not know that the same ground had already been covered by Mr. Justice Stephen in his book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity published in 1873. It was not until much later that I was with great difficulty able to obtain from the Holborn Public Library a copy of the book held together with an elastic band. I hope that, as a result of Professor Hart's criticism of it, more interest will now be aroused in a valuable work. Although I missed altogether one cogent argument advanced by Stephen, I find great similarity between his view and mine on the principles which should affect the use of the criminal law for the enforcement of morals. Commenting on the work of Mr. Justice Stephen and myself, Professor Hart noted that "the similarity in the general tone and sometimes in the detail of their argument is very great". The fact that we reached our conclusions independently gives additional force to Professor Hart's comment (which, however it may have been intended, I regard as complimentary) that they reveal "the outlook characteristic of the English judiciary"."

"The result of cutting [political power] up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number into one heap will govern the rest... In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends; but they will no more be on an equality with the voters than soldiers of Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of monarchy."

"To try to regulate the internal affairs of a family, the relations of love or friendship, or many other things of the same sort, by law or by the coercion of public opinion, is like trying to pull an eyelash out of a man’s eye with a pair of tongs. They may put out the eye, but they will never get hold of the eyelash"

"Men have an all but incurable propensity to try to prejudge all the great questions which interest them by stamping their prejudices upon their language. Law, in many cases, means not only a command, but a beneficent command. Liberty means not the bare absence of restraint, but the absence of injurious restraint. Justice means not mere impartiality in applying general rules to particular cases, but impartiality in applying beneficent general rules to particular cases. Some people half consciously use the word "true" as meaning useful as well as true. Of course language can never be made absolutely neutral and colourless; but unless its ambiguities are understood, accuracy of thought is impossible, and the injury done is proportionate to the logical force and general vigour of character of those who are misled."

"His criticism of Mill is to be found in the sombre and impressive book Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which he wrote as a direct reply to Mill's essay On Liberty. It is evident from the tone of the book that Stephen thought he had found crushing arguments against Mill and had demonstrated that the law might justifiably enforce morality as such or, as he said, that the law should be "a persecution of the grosser forms of vice." Nearly a century later, on the publication of the Wolfenden Committee's report, Lord Devlin, now a member of the House of Lords and a most distinguished writer on the criminal law, in his essay on The Enforcement of Morals took as his target the Report's contention "that there must be a realm of morality and immorality which is not the law's business" and argued in opposition to it that "the suppression of vice is as such the law's business as the suppression of subversive activities." Though a century divides these two legal writers, the similarity in the general tone and sometimes in the detail of their arguments is very great."

"To try to make men equal by altering social arrangements is like trying to make the cards of equal value by shuffling the pack."

"Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same... The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority."

"To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer."

"Originality consists in thinking for yourself, not in thinking differently from other people."

"I am not the advocate of Slavery, Caste, and Hatred, nor do I deny that a sense may be given to the words, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, in which they may be regarded as good. I wish to assert with respect to them two propositions. First, that in the present day even those who use those words most rationally — that is to say, as the names of elements of social life which, like others, have their advantages and disadvantages according to time, place, and circumstance — have a great disposition to exaggerate their advantages and to deny the existence, or at any rate to underrate the importance, of their disadvantages. Next, that whatever signification be attached to them, these words are ill-adapted to be the creed of a religion, that the things which they denote are not ends in themselves, and that when used collectively the words do not typify, however vaguely, any state of society which a reasonable man ought to regard with enthusiasm or self-devotion."

"Sir James Stephen was eminently unromantic. His qualities were those of solidity and force; he preponderated with a character of formidable grandeur, with a massive and rugged intellectual sanity, a colossal commonsense."

"The criminal law stands to the passion of revenge in much the same relation as marriage to the sexual appetite."

"Persuasion, indeed, is a kind of force. It consists in showing a person the consequences of his actions. It is, in a word, force applied through the mind."

"In all he wrote there are words of wisdom and strength. Often, in years to come, when sentiment is tyrannous and when people are afraid to speak plain, because unpleasant, things, will this sturdy spokesman of stern truths, the last of the Benthamites, be missed."

"Representative authorities relying considerably on the Metalogicon include: Friedrich Ueberweg, Heinrich Ritter, Barthelemy Haureau, Francois Picavet, Martin Grabmann, Etienne Gilson, Maurice de Wulf, and Karl Prantl in the history of philosophy; James Mark Baldwin and George S. Brettin the history of psychology; and Leon Maitre, Augusta Drane,Jules Alexandre Clerval, Hastings Rashdall, G. Robert, Charles S.Baldwin, Bigerius Thorlacius, Reginald Lane Poole, Bishop William Stubbs, J. E. Sandys, G. Pare, A. Brunet, and P. Tremblay, Eduard Norden, F. A. Wright, Charles Homer Haskins, and T. A. Sinclair in the history of education and learning."

"These Peripatetics accordingly made careful investigations into the nature of all things, so as to determine which I should be avoided as evil, discounted as useless, sought after as good,or preferred as better, and finally which are called "good" or "bad" according to circumstances. There thus developed two branches of philosophy, natural and moral, which are also called ethics and physics. But, through lack of scientific skill in argumentative reasoning, many absurdities were concluded. Thus Epicurus would have the world originate from atoms and a void, and would dispense with God as its author; whereas the Stoics asserted that matter is coeternal with God, and held that all sins are equally grave."

"To say that a thing "wholly pertains" to something else, or "does not pertain to it in any way," and that something "is predicated in a universal way" of something else, or "is completely alien to it" amount to the same thing. Nevertheless, while one form of expression is [now] in frequent use, the other has become practically obsolete, except so far as it may occasionally be admitted through mutual agreement. In Aristotle's day it was perhaps customary to use both of these forms of expression, but now one has replaced the other [simply] because usage has so decreed."

"Faith is, indeed, most necessary in human affairs, as well as in religion Without faith, no contracts could be concluded, nor could any business be transacted. And without faith, where would be the basis for the divine reward of human merit? As it is, that faith which embraces the truths of religion deserves reward. Such faith is, according to the Apostle, "a substantiation of things to be hoped for, a testimonial to things that appear not." Faith is intermediate between opinion and science."

"Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea"

"Exquisita lectio singulorum, doctissimum; cauta electio meliorum, optimum facit."

"Et pro virtutum habitu quilibet et liber est, et, quatenus est liber, eatenus virtutibus pollet."

"He would be a scholar in any age, and was head and shoulders above his own."

"Lex donum Dei est, æquitatis forma, norma justitiæ, divinæ voluntatis imago, salutis custodia, unio et consolidatio populorum, regula officiorum, exclusio et exterminatio vitiorum, violentiæ et totius injuriæ pœna."

"Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he's on our side."

"If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell."

"Brash. Uncompromising. Brilliant. Hilarious. Pat Condell has found a simple formula for success: stating the obvious without restraining himself with the conventions of unwarranted piety. Pat flenses sacred cows, and after slicing away the fat and gristle of tired apologetics and mindless tradition, he exposes the hollow carcass of a culture's hypocrisy... and we laugh."

"Aside from the bullish, gross themes of Pat Condell's content, the way he delivers it is unnerving in the extreme. He sits expressionless in front of the camera and reads aloud his various pseudo-intellectual musings on religion and social culture. … He leers at you with his horrid, dead eyes, an icy, cold blue resting beneath two light-brown brows. White cropped hair, a marked, red and white face, an English flag of a man, fluttering gently in the breeze of his own bullshit. Watching him is like being trapped inside a frustrated old man's head, an old man with delusions of his own intelligence and a petty ignorance of the world surrounding him. You can feel the warm breath, made stale from the avalanche of pernicious tripe that tickles his tongue on the way out, lapping at your face. His mouth quivers with disdain. …I'm yet to find a video of his in which he doesn't resort to insulting "progressives" and making puerile, blanket statements about things he professes to know about, but actually doesn't."

"He learnt to write what is regarded by competent critics as the purest Latin of the middle ages…The breadth of his reading in the Latin classics is astonishing."

"Western civilisation was not built on slavery. It was built on free thought, ingenuity, and enterprise. Our society was the first to outlaw slavery. Two centuries later we have nothing to apologise for, and we don’t need to compensate anybody for anything."

"Est ergo tyranni et principis hæc differentia sola, quod hic legi obtemperat, et ejus arbitrio populum regit, cujus se credit ministrum."

"the rest of us shouldn’t be compelled to participate in the fantasy and pretend that men can become women and women can become men. They can’t."

"Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism in action."

"are not women. They are men with mental problems."

"The @guardian thinks it’s OK to facilitate an illegal invasion of Europe by hordes of violent fighting age third world savages. Every one of those NGO boats should be at the bottom of the Mediterranean."

"“Transgender” is a fashionable mental disorder being presented to kids as a legitimate medical condition. Shameful."

"The marauding third world savages who terrorise people in their own homes are victims now? Tell somebody who cares."

"This is absurd. There is nothing far-right about . is a far-left hate group on the same moral level as the thugs of #Antifa. Same views. Same stripe. They are the real fascists."

"Dear subhuman white people, you are the new niggers. Get to the back of the bus."

"Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there... In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims."

"When will Sweden be full of Muslims? The short answer is never. They've talked themselves into such a tight corner, and so demonised anyone who questions mass immigration that they could no sooner put a limit on it now than they could click their heels and give a Nazi salute. It's out of the question. So on and on it will go, forever. A hundred thousand or more a year, every year, year after year. It will never stop. Not even when there's a mosque on every street corner blaring the call to prayer five times a day through loudspeakers into your face. That's what's coming, Sweden, and nobody deserves it more than you. Oh yes, you're a real shining "progressive" beacon, all right, a real example to us all – like the guy who dives head first into a thimble of water is an example to us all. ... You deserve to see your culture destroyed. You're clearly not worthy of it. You deserve what's coming, but your children and grandchildren don't, and they're the ones who will pay the price for your irresponsible stupidity and cowardice. They will curse your memory for what you've done to them, especially the female ones, you nation of traitors, you society of lemmings, you ship of fools."

"Jews abused and attacked on the streets of European cities... Muslim mobs attacking synagogues... Nobody gives a damn about Jews and they never have, which is why the Holocaust was allowed to happen in the first place."

"When people are afraid of the truth they've got nowhere to turn. All they have at their disposal is censorship and denial. And Swedish politicians are so deep in denial you can only feel pity for them, because you know that in some dark chamber of their subconscious these wretched people know what a terrible thing they're doing, and they know that history is going to revile them and their entire generation for it. But they just can't face up to it. Psychologically, they are simply not big enough as people to acknowledge, let alone confront, the enormity of their mistake. They've backed themselves into an ideological corner where their only option now is to double down on the insanity and brazen it out until the bitter end, while criminalising anyone who draws attention to it. Whatever social upheaval it may cause, and whatever the cost to Sweden's women, mass Islamic immigration must continue. Any restriction would be an admission that there's a problem, and that would fatally undermine everything they're so desperately pretending to believe in... If you say there's a problem, you'll be treated as a criminal – which means that there are now two problems. One: the Swedish people have an aggressive social cancer growing in their midst; and two: they're not allowed to talk about it."

"if a Swedish news editor was ever gang raped by Muslim immigrants it would be hard not to laugh."

"Why am I anti-Islam? Well, for the simple reason that Islam is anti-me, and it's anti every fundamental value I hold... People say, "Well, you only focus on the bad things about Islam", and yes, I have to admit that if you ignore the bad things — the aggressive separatism, supremacism, and social intolerance, the relentless special pleading and phony grievance mongering, the psychopathic level of misogyny, the honor killing and genital mutilation (sanctioned by the Prophet, incidentally), the rabid gay and Jew hatred, the intimidation and censorship, and the constantly present threat of violence over social issues — well, there isn't much wrong with Islam, it's perfectly kosher (if you'll pardon the expression). The trouble is, when you take these things away, there's nothing left."

"Here in Europe we're very big on human rights, unless somebody claims the fundamental human right of free expression, and then we have a problem. Recently a Swedish politician was convicted of hate speech for correctly connecting mass Islamic immigration with the high level of rape in Sweden. ... Mass Islamic immigration has turned Sweden from one of the world's safest countries for women into the rape capital of Europe. ... Everybody in Sweden knows this is happening, but they pretend it isn't because they're so terrified of being called "Islamophobes" and racists, and with good reason. We've seen what happens to people in Sweden who won't embrace the official multiculti lie. They can expect to have their identities hacked, and to be publicly fingered for reprisals, which could mean being socially ostracised, losing their job, or being physically attacked by far-left thugs who feel entitled not only to smash the opinions of those they disagree with but to smash their skulls for holding those opinions, all in the name of tolerance, of course."

"This House of Commons is a house of frauds. They have destabilised our society by trying to cheat us out of the result of the most important vote any of us have ever taken part in. Political vermin is by no means too strong a term."

"The free exchange of opinion and information is the very lifeblood of the society to which you owe everything you have. It's the oxygen that gives us clarity and strength. Restricting it is like closing down synapses in the collective brain. It's an act of sabotage and nobody has the right to do it any more than they have the right to arbitrarily ration water or air. No judge, no politician, no police officer and certainly no braying mob of sanctimonious, privileged, middle-class, left-wing, students who think they know best for everyone."

"Surely the most comically deluded people on this planet, outside creationists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists, are idealistic left-wing gay people who think they share a common cause with Muslims as two oppressed minorities, when opinion polls tell us that most Muslims are disgusted by homosexuality and think it's completely unacceptable. Among U.K. Muslims, disapproval is 100%. Admittedly, that's from a sample of only 500 people, who all happened to agree unanimously, but that's hardly representative. After all, not all Muslims were included, so we can't reasonably extrapolate anything from it without being racist. That's a relief. I thought we might have to face an unpleasant truth there for a second, didn't you?"