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The wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule primarily by the same instincts as the voracity of the sea slug.

Edmund Wilson

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Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. Oxford University Press, 1962, introduction.

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Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.

Isaiah Berlin

Four Essays on Liberty

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Berlin, Isaiah. Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford University Press, 1969, introduction.

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The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who posses themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.

Robert H. Jackson

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Jackson, Robert H. "Opening Statement before the International Military Tribunal." 21 Nov. 1945, International Military Tribunal, Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, Germany.

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Man's nature, his passions and anxieties, are a cultural product; as a matter of fact, man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of which we call history.

Erich Fromm

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Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. Farrar & Rinehart, 1941, ch. 1.

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Is it not a fundamental error to consider children as innocent beings, whose little weaknesses may perhaps want some correction, rather than as beings who bring into the world a corrupt nature and evil dispositions, which it should be the great end of education to rectify?

Hannah More

Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education

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More, Hannah. Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. Vol. 1, London T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1799, ch. 2.

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The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

E.M. Forster (Edward Morgan Forster)

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Forster, E.M. "A Book that Influenced Me," Two Cheers for Democracy. Hogarth Press, 1951. Originally published in 1944, publisher unknown.

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The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

Havelock Ellis

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Ellis, Havelock. Little Essays of Love and Virtue. George H. Doran Company/A & C Black, 1922, ch. 7.

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The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

George F. Kennan

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Kennan, George Frost [published as "X"]. "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." Foreign Affairs, July 1947.

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It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Maugham, William Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. William Heinemann, 1919, ch. 17.

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Maugham, William Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. Vintage Classics, 2009, ch. 17.

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It's good to be just plain happy; it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how... And still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.

Henry Miller

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Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. Colt Press, 1941, pt. 1.

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Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury.

Learned Hand

Helvering v. Gregory

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Hand, Learned. US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809 (2d Cir. 1934).

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From a very early age, I had imbibed the opinion, that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.

William Cobbett

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Cobbett, William. Political Register. 22 Dec. 1832.

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Out on the street I couldn't tell the Vietnam veterans from the rock and roll veterans. The Sixties had made so many casualties, its war and its music had run power off the same circuit for so long they didn't even have to fuse.

Michael Herr

Dispatches

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Herr, Michael. "Breathing Out." Dispatches. Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

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Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at it while it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Yann Martel

Life of Pi (novel)

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Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Knopf Canada, 2001, ch. 1.

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His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done whech may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Arthur James Balfour

Balfour Declaration

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Read the Balfour Declaration at the Yale Law School library website

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Balfour, Arthur James. Letter to Lord Rothschild. 2 Nov. 1917.

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My definition of Man is, "a Cooking Animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook... Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

James Boswell

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Boswell, James. Journal entry. 15 Aug. 1773.

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Boswell, James. "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides." A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edited by Jack Lynch and Celia Barnes. Oxford University Press, 2021.

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The nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.

Arnold J. Toynbee

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Toynbee, Arnold J. Quoted in A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, written by D.C. Somervell. Oxford University Press, 1948, vol. 4.

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People who are always praising the past
And especially the times of faith as best
Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages
And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

Stevie Smith

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Smith, Stevie. "The Past." Not Waving but Drowning. Andre Deutsch, 1957, I. 1.

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Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

James Jeans

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Jeans, James. The Mysterious Universe. Cambridge University Press/Macmillan, 1930, ch. 1.

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