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“The Wisdom of Solomon (Carl)

They censor words not the things they denote:
It would create less of a stir to drop a piece of shit on Grant's tomb
than to write it out in white paint.
Because people recognize that's what memorials are for–old bums & dogs to shit on.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties

“The [quantum] theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac.”
― Albert Einstein

“No doubt you will be delighted to hear from an adept who has undertaken the operation of his H.G.A. in accord with our traditions.

The operation began auspiciously with a chromatic display of psychosomatic symptoms, and progressed rapidly to acute psychosis. The operator has alternated satisfactorily between manic hysteria and depressing melancholy stupor on approximately 40 cycles, and satisfactory progress has been maintained in social ostracism, economic collapses and mental disassociation.

These statements are mentioned not in any vainglorious spirit of conceit, but rather that they may serve as comfort and inspiration to other aspirants on the Path.

Now I'm off to the wilds of Mexico for a period, also in pursuit of the elusive H.G.A. before winding up in the guard finally via the booby hotels, the graveyard, or�? If the final, you can tell all the little Practicuses that I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

—No one. Once called 210”
― Jack Whiteside Parsons, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons

“Honest dissent and unorthodox ideas often promote scientific knowledge. Even though more often wrong than right, unorthodox ideas are apt to stimulate some clear thinking among the orthodox. And from time to time, a doubter makes a basic discovery. But the lysenkoism is quite sterile of ideas and of suggestions for new experiments. It urges a retreat to archaic views, long abandoned with sufficient reason. In this, the lysenkoism is comparable only to the anti-evolutionism in the USA. New arguments and new facts mean just as little to the lysenkoists as they do to the anti-evolutionists.”
― Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe

“Today's cheerful note: The atomic bomb can't kill you more times than you're already going to die already.”
― The Index-Journal

“Lysenkoism may be useful only because it provides a lesson. Whether we like it or not, the days of the independent scientist and of independent science are about over. The more important science becomes in the lives of individuals and of nations, the more it will need popular support and will have to submit to social control. But the forms and techniques of this support and control have not yet been devised and tested. The problem is a new one. The Soviet rulers have tried a solution, but their solution has resulted in lysenkoism, and thus proved to be a dismal failure.”
― Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe

“I shall plunge down into the abysmal horror of madness and death—or I shall walk upon the dawn.”
― Marjorie Cameron

“For the Christian, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least primarily, the legal interpretation of the Divine Law (talmud or fiqh). The sacred doctrine in the latter sense has, to say the least, much less in common with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in Christianity: in Christianity philosophy became an integral part of the officially recognized and even required training of the student of the sacred doctrine. This difference explains partly the eventual collapse of philosophic inquiry in the Islamic and in the Jewish world, a collapse which has no parallel in the Western Christian world.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“What is called freedom of thought in a large number of cases amounts to—and even for all practical purposes consists of—the ability to choose between two or more different views presented by the small minority of people who are public speakers or writers. If this choice is prevented, the only kind of intellectual independence of which many people are capable is destroyed, and that is the only freedom of thought which is of political importance.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“[Many ordinary people] would admit, as a matter of course, that man can lie and does lie. But they would add that lies are short-lived and cannot stand the test of repetition—let alone of constant repetition—and that therefore a statement which is constantly repeated and never contradicted must be true. Another line of argument maintains that a statement made by an ordinary fellow may be a lie, but the truth of a statement made by a responsible and respected man, and therefore particularly by a man in a highly responsible or exalted position, is morally certain. These two enthymemes lead to the conclusion that the truth of a statement which is constantly repeated by the head of government and never contradicted is absolutely certain.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“In fact, it is by no means certain that the purpose of Plato or of Aristotle, as ¹óÄå°ùÄå²úÄ« understood it, required the actualization of the best political order or of the virtuous city. ¹óÄå°ùÄå²úÄ« adumbrates the problem by making a distinction between Socratesâ€� investigations and Plato’s investigations, as well as between “the way of Socratesâ€� and the way adopted eventually by Plato. “The science and the art of Socratesâ€� which is to be found in Plato’s Laws, is only a part of Plato’s, the other part being “the science and the art of Timaeusâ€� which is to be found in the Timaeus. “The way of Socratesâ€� is characterized by the emphasis on “the scientific investigation of justice and the virtues,â€� whereas the art of Plato is meant to supply “the science of the essence of every beingâ€� and hence especially the science of the divine and on the natural things. The difference between the way of Socrates and the way of Plato points back to the difference between the attitude of the two men toward the actual cities. The crucial difficulty was created by the political or social status of philosophy: in the nations and cities of Plato’s time, there was no freedom of teaching and of investigation. Socrates was therefore confronted with the alternative, whether he should choose security and life, and thus conform with the false opinions and the wrong way of life of his fellow-citizens, or else non-conformity and death. Socrates chose non-conformity and death. Plato found a solution to the problem posed by the fate of Socrates, in founding the virtuous city in speech: only in that “other cityâ€� can man reach his perfection. Yet, according to ¹óÄå°ùÄå²úÄ«, Plato “repeatedâ€� his account of the way of Socrates and he “repeatedâ€� the mention of the vulgar of the cities and nations which existed in his time. The repetition amounts to a considerable modification of the first statement, or to a correction of the Socratic way. The Platonic way, as distinguished from the Socratic way, is a combination of the way of Socrates with the way of Thrasymachus; for the intransigent way of Socrates is appropriate only for the philosopher’s dealing with the elite, whereas the way of Thrasymachus, which is both more and less exacting than the former, is appropriate for his dealing with the vulgar. What ¹óÄå°ùÄå²úÄ« suggests is that by combining the way of Socrates with the way of Thrasymachus, Plato avoided the conflict with the vulgar and thus the fate of Socrates. Accordingly, the revolutionary quest for the other city ceased to be necessary: Plato substituted it for a more constructive way of action, namely, the gradual replacement of the accepted opinions by the truth or an approximation of the truth. The replacement of the accepted opinions could not be gradual, if it were not accompanied by a provisional acceptance of the accepted opinions: as ¹óÄå°ùÄå²úÄ« elsewhere declares, conformity with the opinions of the religious community in which one is brought up, is a necessary qualification for the future philosopher. The replacement of the accepted opinions could not be gradual if it were not accompanied by the suggestion of opinions which, while pointing toward the truth, do not too flagrantly contradict the accepted opinions. We may say that ¹óÄå°ùÄå²úī’s Plato eventually replaces the philosopher-king who rules openly in the virtuous city, by the secret kingship of the philosopher who, being “a perfect manâ€� precisely because he is an “investigator,â€� lives privately as a member of an imperfect society which he tries to humanize within the limits of the possible.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“Owing to the position which “the science of °ì²¹±ôÄå³¾â€� acquired in Islam, the status of philosophy in Islam was intermediate between its status in Christianity and in Judaism. To turn therefore to the status of philosophy within Judaism, it is obvious that while no one can be learned in the sacred doctrine of Christianity without having had considerable philosophic training, one can be a perfectly competent talmudist without having had any philosophic training. Jews of the philosophic competence of Halevi and Maimonides took it for granted that being a Jew and being a philosopher are mutually exclusive. At first glance, Maimonidesâ€� Guide for the Perplexed is the Jewish counterpart of Thomas Aquinasâ€� Summa Theologica; but the Guide never acquired within Judaism even a part of the authority which the Summa enjoyed within Christianity; not Maimonidesâ€� Guide, but his Mishnah Torah, i.e., his codification of Jewish law, could be described as the Jewish counterpart to the Summa. Nothing is more revealing than the difference between the beginnings of the Guide and the Summa. The first article of the Summa deals with the question as to whether the sacred doctrine is required besides the philosophic disciplines: Thomas as it were justifies the sacred doctrine before the tribunal of philosophy. One cannot even imagine Maimonides opening the Guide, or any other work, with a discussion of the question as to whether the Halakha (the sacred Law) is required besides the philosophic disciplines.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing