To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault.
Robert ConquestRead
Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands.
Interpretation
People often resist or oppose ideas they do not fully grasp, but are fervent in their beliefs regarding topics they do understand.
This quote by Robert Conquest suggests that individuals tend to hold reactionary or conservative views primarily on subjects with which they are familiar. It highlights the tendency of people to strongly defend or critique ideas based on their understanding, which can lead to rigid perspectives that may not allow for growth or exploration of new thoughts.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about political ideologies to illustrate how people's knowledge affects their viewpoints.
To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault.
Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.
Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time - is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.
Americanism is not a matter of skin or color.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.
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