aristotle getty (1)
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
Thus the virtues arise in us neither by nature nor against nature. Rather we are by nature able to acquire them, and reach our complete perfection through habit. p.673
plato
Plato The Republic
The next step, apparently, is for us to try to discover, and point out, what the failings are in cities nowadays, which stop them being run in this way, and what is the minimum change which could help a city arrive at political arrangements of this kind. Ideally a single change. Failing that, two. And failing that, as few as possible in number and as small as possible in impact. 472b p.175
marx
Marx Communist Manifesto
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, Unite!
Immanuel Kant for Pianko 5 15
Kant What Is Enlightenment?
1. Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and course to use it without buidance from another. Sapere Aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!" -- that is the motto of enlightenment.
Foucault
Foucault, What is Enlightenment?
I shall thus characterize the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves as a historico-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings. p.47
Dostojewski
Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor
Besides, Thou hast no right to add one syllable to that which was already uttered by Thee before.... Why shouldst Thou now return, to impede us in our work?
Frederick Douglass (circa 1879) (cropped)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands by the collar, and brought him by a sudden snatch to the ground.
trojanhorse
Homer the Illiad
"Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter."
oedipusthechild
Sophocles Oedipus Rex
"O god—it has all come true. Light, let me look on you for the last time!"
