Ademption

“When people ask why I go on my travels I usually reply that I know what I am escaping from but not what I am looking for. If they tell me that there may be just as little soundness among foreigners and that their morals may be no better than ours, I reply: first that would not be easy: Our wickedness has assumed many faces. Secondly, there is always gain in changing a bad condition for an uncertain one, and that the ills of others do not need to sting us as our own do.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The collapse of the politics of inevitability ushers in another experience of time: the politics of eternity. Whereas inevitability promises a better future for everyone, eternity places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past. Within inevitability, no one is responsible because we all know that the details will sort themselves out for the better; within eternity, no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“Now laws remain respected not because they are just but because they are laws. That is the mystical basis of their authority. They have no other. It serves them well, too. Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing. No person commits crimes more grossly, widely or regularly than our laws. If anyone obeys them only when they are just, then he fails to obey them for just the reason he must!”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.”
― James Randi