1943 Quotes

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

[West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)]”
― Robert H. Jackson

“I never can understand how two men can write a book together. To me, that’s like three people getting together to have a baby.”
― Evelyn Waugh

“It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling.

And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way, never partially, or that kind of thing.”
― Adolf Hitler, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

“It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare—lorries or no lorries—and saying the Adorations; and you must not mind snubbing your guest—or your host—if he or she should prove ignorant of his or her share of the dialogue. It is perhaps because these matters are so petty and trivial in appearance that they afford so excellent a training. They teach you concentration, mindfulness, moral and social courage, and a host of other virtues.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

“The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to a sympathetic body. Were you not a Mason, or Co-Mason, you would have to be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors, and then—probably—thrown out on the garbage heap. Well, no, it's not as bad as that; but we certainly don't want anybody who chooses to apply. Would you do it yourself, if you were on the Committee of a Club? The O.T.O. is a serious body, engaged on a work of Cosmic scope. You should question yourself: what can I contribute?”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

“One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won’t solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationships: The answer lies within ourselves. If we can’t find peace and happiness there, it’s not going to come from the outside.”
― Tenzin Palmo

“Ein Mensch kann einsam sein, obwohl er von vielen geliebt wird, wenn er nicht für einen Menschen 'der Liebste' ist.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank Gesamtausgabe: Das Tagebuch | Die Kurzgeschichten

“Ever since Parsons had been a boy, however, the dark side of magic had captivated him. "I know that witchcraft is mostly nonsense, except where it is a blind," he wrote to Crowley in 1943, "but I am so nauseated by Christian and Theosophical guff about the 'good and the true' that I prefer the appearance of evil to that of good.”
― George Pendle, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

“Every student of the history of philosophy assumes, tacitly or expressly, rightly or wrongly, that he knows what philosophy is or what a philosopher is. In attempting to transform the necessarily confused notion with which one starts one’s investigations, into a clear notion of philosophy, one is confronted sooner or later with what appears to be the most serious implication of the question “what a philosopher is,” viz., the relation of philosophy to social or political life. This relation is adumbrated by the term “Natural Law,” a term which is as indispensable as it is open to grave objections. If we follow the advice of our great medieval teachers and ask first “the philosopher” for his view, we learn from him that there are things which are “by nature just.” On the basis of Aristotle, the crucial question concerns then, not the existence of a ius naturale, but the manner of its existence: “is” it in the sense in which numbers and figures “are,” or “is” it in a different sense? The question can be reduced, to begin with, to this more common form: is the ius naturale a dictate of right reason, a set of essentially rational rules?”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“Every student of the history of philosophy assumes, tacitly or expressly, rightly or wrongly, that he knows what philosophy is or what a philosopher is. In attempting to transform the necessarily confused notion with which one starts one’s investigations, into a clear notion of philosophy, one is confronted sooner or later with what appears to be the most serious implication of the question 'what a philosopher is,' viz., the relation of philosophy to social or political life. This relation is adumbrated by the term 'Natural Law,' a term which is as indispensable as it is open to grave objections.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing