Wisdom about the challenge of learning from a great genius and then finding one’s own path. Here is Zarathustra: “Now I go alone, my disciples, You too, go now, alone. Thus I want it. Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. The man of […]
Geniuses and their followers Read More »
Re-posting this classic from Rudyard Kipling, which is also on my Quotations page: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to
Kipling on the individual and the tribe Read More »
Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism. Excerpt from Nietzsche and the Nazis.
Appendix 2: Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism [Nietzsche and the Nazis] Read More »
In a letter to his former master, Frederick Douglass explains his decision to escape from slavery: “The morality of the act, I dispose as follows: I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and
Frederick Douglass and Ayn Rand Read More »
A favorite from Jacob Burckhardt’s great The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860): In the Middle Ages, “Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation — only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment and consideration of
Burckhardt quotation on the birth of individualism in the Italian Renaissance Read More »
An open letter Douglass wrote in 1848 to Thomas Auld, his former master, on the tenth anniversary of his escape from slavery to freedom. (A 350-word excerpt is here.) TO MY OLD MASTER. Thomas Auld, Sir: The long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation which unhappily subsisted between you and myself, leads me
Frederick Douglass’s letter to his former master Read More »
“Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of
Yukio Mishima’s sacrificial collectivism, nationalist version Read More »
Enjoyed this one a lot: 15-minute overview of the free speech principles, historically and philosophically, and then a series of questions from the student members of the Dundee FSS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz2hEDDPxlU
Dundee (Scotland) Students Free Speech Society Read More »