For example, in many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty.
Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard [Obama's “racism” speech]; and if they did, they wondered for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell [...] But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.
[Gandalf said,] “I fancy [Saruman] could do some mischief still in a small mean way.”
[Saruman said,] “ ‘One ill turn deserves another.’ It would have been a sharper lesson, if only you had given me a little more time and more Men. Still I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.”...
But Frodo said, “...He has lost all power, save his voice that can still daunt you and deceive you, if you let it. ...”
Do me a favor, tell my nephew he's a boy, will you?He doesn't know. He doesn't know! I asked him before, he didn't know what the hell I was talking about!What do you mean, "he's a baby"? Now is when he should know! Now, during his formative years! Don't wait till he grows up and makes an arbitrary decision!
Descartes wrote in heavy but lucid nontechnical French, for the layman if not for the man in the street. He was the first of the great popularizers (vulgarisateurs in the strictly French sense): a distinguished line and particularly Gallic, in which Pascal himself, and Renan, were to be his successors. He went so far as to include among his potential audience "even women": a revolutionary step, for the elaborate gallantry of the time had not yet broken down the prejudice against feminine brains: chivalry is the most delicate form of contempt. It is odd to think of the austere logician, mathematician, and physicist as a professor for society ladies: yet he had among his disciples Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of Sweden. We might consider him as a forerunner of Trissotin in Moliere's Learned Ladies; most decidedly of Fontenelle, whose Chats on the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds are masterpieces of drawingroom wit and courtesy; of Voltaire, who wrote his Universal History for Madame du Chatelet; of Bellac in Pailleron's Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie, the professor as society pet, a composite picture of many successful academic lecturers; even of Bergson, whose courses at the College de France were thronged with the aristocracy of birth and wealth.
Like most ’60s radicals—of whatever stripe—he [Chavez] vastly overestimated the appeal of hard times and simple living; he was not the only Californian of the time to promote the idea of a Poor People’s Union, but as everyone from the Symbionese Liberation Army to the Black Panthers would discover, nobody actually wants to be poor.
Soc. The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.
Phaedr. Clearly.
Soc. And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?
And what is good, Phaedrus , and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)
Test all things; hold fast what is good.
