The Book of Merlyn

“After every war, all the officials on the losing side who held a higher rank than colonel ought to be executed out of hand, irrespective of their war-guilt.  No doubt there would be a certain amount of injustice in this measure, but the consciousness that death was the certain result of losing a war would have a deterrent effect on those who help to promote and to regulate such engagements, and it might, by preventing a few wars, save millions of lives among the lower classes.  [However], it seems less reasonable than it seems, partly because the responsibility for warfare does not lie wholly with the leaders.  After all, a leader has to be chosen or accepted by those who he leads.  The hydra-headed multitudes are not so innocent as they like to pretend.”

The Book of Merlyn

“Marx was a bad naturalist because he…subscribed to the Égalité Fallacy, which is abhorrent to nature.  Human beings are no more equal in their merits and abilities than they are equal in face and stature.  You might just as well insist that all the people in the world should wear the same size of boot.”

The Book of Merlyn

“Neither force, nor argument, nor opinion are thinking. Argument is only a display of mental force, a sort of fencing with points in order to gain a victory, not for truth.  Opinions are the blind alleys of lazy or of stupid men, who are unable to think.  Opinion can never stand beside truth.”

The Book of Merlyn

“Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves.  It is hopeless doing things for people – it is often very dangerous indeed to do things at all – and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas.  Then, if you make available a larger stock, the people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it.  By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted for rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of the millennia.  Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas.  It is not his business to impose them on people.”

The Once and Future King

“Men must be ready to say: Yes, since Cain there has been injustice, but we can only set the misery right if we accept a status quo.  Lands have been robbed, men slain, nations humiliated.  Let us now start fresh without remembrance, rather than live forward and backward at the same time.  We cannot build the future by avenging the past.”

The Once and Future King

“The Queen dried her tears and looked at him, smiling like a spring shower.  In a minute they were kissing, feeling like the green earth refreshed by rain.  They thought that they understood each other once more – but their doubt had been planted.  Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing a the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.”

The Once and Future King

“Although nine tenths of [this] story seems to be about knights jousting and quests for the holy grail and things of that sort, the narrative is a whole, and it deals with the reasons why the young man came to grief at the end.  It is the tragedy, the Aristotelian and comprehensive tragedy, of sin coming home to roost.  That why we have to take note of the parentage of Arthur’s son Mordred, and to remember, when the time comes, that the king had slept with his own sister.  He did not know he was doing so, and perhaps it may have been due to her, but it seems in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.”

The Once and Future King

“There was just such a man when I was young – an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work.  He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos.  But the thing this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ.  Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people, but the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate.  On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.”

The Once and Future King

“There is no excuse for war, none whatever, and whatever the wrong which your nation might be doing to mine – short of war – my nation would be in the wrong if it started a war so as to redress it.  A murderer, for instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and oppressing him – so why should a nation be allowed to?  Wrongs have to be redressed by reason, not by force.”

The Once and Future King

“The best thing for being sad is to learn something.  That is the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then – to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”