Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Frederic BastiatRead
It has served us well, this myth of Christ.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the story of Christ, whether true or not, has benefitted society.
Pope Leo X's quote reflects on the role of the figure of Christ as a pivotal myth in shaping cultural and moral frameworks throughout history. It implies that religious narratives, regardless of their factual basis, can provide social cohesion, ethical guidance, and a sense of purpose to many individuals and communities, making their impact undeniably profound and beneficial to civilization.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of religion on society, one could say, 'As Pope Leo X noted, it has served us well, this myth of Christ.'
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.
Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something (All The King's Men)
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
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