We Are Not By Nature Cruel.

A Book Should Be An Axe To Chop Open The Frozen Sea Inside Us.

...the Program Of Scientific Experimentation That Leads You To Conclude That Animals Are Imbeciles Is Profoundly Anthropocentric. It Values Being Able To Find Your Way Out Of A Sterile Maze, Ignoring The Fact That If The Researcher Who Designed The Maze Were To Be Parachuted Into The Jungles Of Borneo, He Or She Would Be Dead Of Starvation In A Week...if I As A Human Being Were Told That The Standards By Which Animals Are Being Measured In These Experiments Are Human Standards, I Would Be Insulted.

The Modern State Appeals To Morality, To Religion, And To Natural Law As The Ideological Foundation Of Its Existence. At The Same Time It Is Prepared To Infringe Any Or All Of These In The Interest Of Self-preservation.

Erasmus Dramatizes A Well-established Political Position: That Of The Fool Who Claims License To Criticize All And Sundry Without Reprisal, Since His Madness Defines Him As Not Fully A Person And Therefore Not A Political Being With Political Desires And Ambitions. The Praise Of Folly, Therefore Sketches The Possibility Of A Position For The Critic Of The Scene Of Political Rivalry, A Position Not Simply Impartial Between The Rivals But Also, By Self-definition, Off The Stage Of Rivalry Altogether.

But It Is The Knowledge Of How Contingent My Unease Is, How Dependent On A Baby That Wails Beneath My Window One Day And Does Not Wail The Next, That Brings The Worst Shame To Me, The Greatest Indifference To Annihilation. I Know Somewhat Too Much; And From This Knowledge, Once One Has Been Infected, There Seems To Be No Recovering. I Ought Never To Have Taken My Lantern To See What Was Going On In The Hut By The Granary. On The Other Hand, There Was No Way, Once I Had Picked Up The Lantern, For Me To Put It Down Again. The Knot Loops In Upon Itself; I Cannot Find The End.