For each person there is a sentence — a series of words — which has the power to destroy him … another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you’re lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.
Philip K. Dick, VALIS (1981).
In short, insofar as we seek knowledge, we should retain an open mind and thus we should never shield ourselves from abhorrent beliefs. We can avoid being bewitched by abhorrent beliefs (or alluring beliefs) by subjecting all available theories to criticism.
Danny Frederick, “We Should Not Shield Ourselves from Abhorrent Beliefs,” Against the Philosophical Tide: Essays in Popperian Critical Rationalism (2020).
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance — these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
Louis Veuillot, as quoted by Frank Herbert, Children of Dune (1976).
If the worst government be better than anarchy, the advantages of the best must be incalculable.
Nassau William Senior, Esq., Political Economy (Third Edition: 1854), p. 76.
When we read of African and Asiatic tyrannies, where millions seem themselves to consider their own happiness as dust in the balance compared with the caprices of their despot, we are inclined to suppose the evils of misgovernment to be the worst to which man can be exposed. But they are trifles compared to those which are felt in the absence of government. The mass of the inhabitants of Egypt, Persia, and Burmah, or to go as low as perhaps it is possible, the subjects of the Kings of Dahomi and Ashantee, enjoy security, if we compare their situation with that of the ungoverned inhabitants of New Zealand. So strongly is this felt, that there is no tyranny which men will not eagerly embrace, if anarchy is to be the alternative. Almost all the differences between the different races of men, differences so great that we sometimes nearly forget that they all belong to the same species, may be traced to the degrees in which they enjoy the blessings of good government.
Nassau William Senior, Esq., Political Economy (Third Edition: 1854), p. 75–6.