The lodger About the quote

The lodger

About the quote : Hesse 1877-1962 was a philosophical writer, best known for his work Siddartha. In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons. A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with mens lives should not pay with their own. I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule and both commonly succeed, and are right. When fanatics are on top the lodger is no limit to oppression. Force without judgement falls on its own weight. During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism. One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. How can you make a war on terror if war itself is terrorism? There is no flag large enough to cover the the lodger of killing innocent people. Historically, the most terrible things-war, genocide and slavery-have resulted from obedience, not disobedience. Its more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them. Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice Suspicion must always fall on those who attempt to silence their opponents. Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: War is the lodger in that it begets more evil than it kills. It is not only the living who are killed in war. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. About the quote : The character Salvor Hardin speaks these words in Asimovs Foundation. We believed ourselves watching only the madmen outside our frontiers, and we remained defenseless against our own madmen. I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision.