Biblio

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1871
Aesop (1871).  Æsop's fables.
"A wolf, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea, which should justify to the lamb himself, his right to eat him. He then addressed him: 'Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.' 'Indeed,' bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice: 'I was not then born.' Then said the wolf: 'You feed in my pasture.' 'No, good sir,' replied the lamb: 'I have not yet tasted grass.' Again said the wolf: 'You drink of my well.' 'No, exclaimed the lamb: I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me.' Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying: 'Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.'
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny." (p. 2)
1906
Thoreau, H. D., Torrey B., & Sanborn F. B. (1906).  The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Cape Cod and Miscellanies.
"If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for — business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business." (p. 457)
1908
Eliot, G. (1908).  The complete works of George Eliot....
"Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of; he had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong, determined soul can learn it—by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering." (p. 309)
1922
Dostoyevsky, F. (1922).  The Brothers Karamazov: a novel in four parts and an epilogue.
"He did no one any harm, but 'Why do they think him so saintly?' And that question alone gradually repeated gave rise at last to an intense, insatiable hatred toward him. That I believe was why many people were extremely delighted at the smell of decomposition which came so quickly, for not a day had passed since his death." (p. 352)
1943
1949
Orwell, G. (1949).  1984.
"But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
1950
Horney, K. (1950).  Neurosis and human growth: the struggle toward self-realization.
"If the word 'depersonalization' did not already have a specific psychiatric meaning, it would be a good term for what alienation from the self essentially is: it is a depersonalizing, and therefore a devitalizing process." (p. 161)
1952
Trecker, H. B., & Trecker A. R. (1952).  How to Work with Groups.
"Problems arise in groups when the personal touch goes out. When groups become so large that they are mechanical rather than personal the human being and his needs become secondary. Under such circumstances people are likely to feel frustrated, unwanted, and unimportant. They see no way to take hold, to be a real part of the group. They strike out and fight back against a system which does violence to their deep need to be important." (p. 139)
Vonnegut, K. (1952).  Player Piano.
"Strange business", said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon." (p. 93)
1954
de Unamuno, M. (1954).  Tragic Sense of Life.
"To have recourse to those ambiguous words, 'optimism' and 'pessimism', does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very contrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a doctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and the so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe, on the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatest of all, have been men of despair and that by despair they have accomplished their mighty works." (p. 130)
1955
Fromm, E. (1955).  The Sane Society.
"[Man] is part of the machine, rather than its master as an active agent. The machine, instead of being in his service to do work for him which once had to be performed by sheer physical energy, has become his master. Instead of the machine being the substitute for human energy, man has become a substitute for the machine. His work can be defined as the performance of acts which cannot yet be performed by machines." (p. 180)
1956
Twain, M. (1956).  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
"All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised."
Whyte, W. H. (1956).  The Organization Man.
"It is the nature of a new idea to confound current consensus—even the mildly new idea. It might be patently in order, but, unfortunately, the group has a vested interest in its miseries as well as its pleasures, and irrational as this may be, many a member of organization life can recall instances where the group clung to known disadvantages rather than risk the anarchies of change." (p. 440)
1958
1959
Dickinson, E. (1959).  Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson.
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
1961
Gardner, J. (1961).  Excellence.
"It may help the reader to know what my own vantage point is. I am concerned with the social context in which excellence may survive or be smothered. I am concerned with the fate of excellence in our society." (p. 11)
1962
Dickens, C. (1962).  David Copperfield.
"It is a fact which will long be remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge, and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go 'meandering' about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, "Let us have no meandering." (p. 14)
Bonhoeffer, D. (1962).  Letters and papers from prison. (Bethge, Eberhard, Ed.).
"We have been the silent witnesses of evil deeds. Many storms have gone over our heads. We have learned the art of deception and of equivocal speech. Experience has made us suspicious of others, and prevented us from being open and frank. Bitter conflicts have made us weary and even cynical. Are we still serviceable? It is not the genius that we shall need, not the misanthropist, not the adroit tactician, but honest, straightforward men. Will our spiritual reserves prove adequate and our candor with ourselves remorseless enough to enable us to find our way back again to simplicity and straightforwardness?" (p. 34)
1963
1965

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