Fred Hebert > Fred's Quotes

“The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
― Karl Raimund Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

“It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c'est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d'être vécue, c'est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie.”
― Albert Camus, Le Mythe De Sisyphe: Essai Sur L'absurde

“But hell can endure for only a limited period, and life will begin again one day. History may perhaps have
an end; but our task is not to terminate it but to create it, in the image of what we henceforth know to be
true. Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason
for his existence in the order of nature. For him, the great god Pan is not dead. His most instinctive act of
rebellion, while it affirms the value and the dignity common to all men, obstinately claims, so as to satisfy
its hunger for unity, an integral part of the reality whose name is beauty. One can reject all history and yet
accept the world of the sea and the stars. The rebels who wish to ignore nature and beauty are condemned
to banish from history everything with which they want to construct the dignity of existence and of labor.
Every great reformer tries to create in history what Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and Tolstoy knew
how to create: a world always ready to satisfy the hunger for freedom and dignity which every man
carries in his heart. Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions
will have need of beauty. The procedure of beauty, which is to contest reality while endowing it with
unity, is also the procedure of rebellion. Is it possible eternally to reject injustice without ceasing to
acclaim the nature of man and the beauty of the world? Our answer is yes. This ethic, at once unsubmissive
and loyal, is in any event the only one that lights the way to a truly realistic revolution. In upholding
beauty, we prepare the way for the day of regeneration when civilization will give first place—far ahead
of the formal principles and degraded values of history—to this living virtue on which is founded the
common dignity of man and the world he lives in, and which we must now define in the face of a world
that insults it.”
― Albert Camus, The Rebel