Nobody would choose to have all possible good things on the condition that he must enjoy them alone; for man is a social being and designed by nature to live with others; accordingly the happy man must have society, for he has eveything that is naturally good." --Aristotle, Ethics.

Ulysess:
. . . How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Perogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows! Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead;
Force should be right; or rather right and wrong
(Between whose endless war justice resides)
Should lose their names and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will; and power,
Must make perforce universal prey,
And last eat up itself.

--William Shakespeare, Troilus & Cressida

[One tenet of the Masonic teaching of Chrisian Krause was that:] ". . . society and civilization are, in like manner, an artificial order, maintained at the price of vigilence and diligence and in opposition to natural forces." --Roscoe Pound, Masonic Addresses and Writings.

"Fascism, as a general movement, is the characteristic defense of an imperiled social system. Most of the Western nations are developing fascist tendencies because of the poverty and disillusionment of the post-War period have given the radical party sufficient strength to challenge the existing order. One method of meeting this challenge is to identify national peace and social unity with the established order and thus to place those who wish to change the system under the disadvantage of threatening social peace. . . The Germans with their passion for consistency met the Marxist doctrine of the class struggle with a highly elaborated philosophy of Volk und Rasse, of nation and race. Hitler was of course not the philosopher who developed this philosophy. He was a demagogue who exploited the resentments of a defeated nation and the apprehensions and discontents of a divided people in terms of that philosophy.. . . Anti-Semitism is, of course, something more or less than the dark side of the rediscovery of Volk." Reinhold Niebuhr, The Germans Unhappy Philosophers in Politics (1933).

" . . . Fool, not to see that every great reform has seemed to threaten the structure of society,--but that society has not perished, because man is a social animal, and with every turn falls into a new pattern like the Kaleidoscope. If I were a philosopher I should say-Fool both, not to see that you are the two blades (conservative and radical) of the shears that cut out the future. But if I were the cynical man in the back of the philosopher's head I should conclude-Greatest fool of all, Thou-not to see that man's destiny is to fight. Therefore take thy place on the one side or the other, if with the added grace of knowing that the enemy is as good a man as thou, so much the better, but kill him if thou canst." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes letter to Judge Learned Hand, June 24, 1921

"Because the [Brookings Institution] was in Washington, [Max] Lerner enjoyed a bonus in the form of proximity to two Supreme Court justices he came to admire. One was Holmes . . . the other was Brandeis, the first Jew ever appointed to the High Court, who would invite several of the younger students to his home Sunday afternoons. What stood out in Lerner's memory of these encounters was the passion with which Brandeis talked of his ideal of the small community, as exemplified in Periclean Athens, in Jeffersonian America, and in the new communities being built by Zionist settlers in Palestine. These were his three models of society as it ought to be, uncontaminated by concentrated power and what he called the 'curse of bigness.'"-Max Lerner, by Sanford Lackoff.

"In the ancient republics, where the whole body of the people assembled in person, a single orator, or an artful statesman, was generally seen to rule with as complete a sway as if a scepter had been placed in his single hand. On the same principle, the more multitudinous a representative assembly may be rendered, the more it will partake of the infirmities incident to collective meetings of the people. Ignorance will be the dupe of cunning, and passion the slave of sophistry and declamation. . . [enlarging an assembly too far] the countenance of the government may become more democratic, but the soul that animates it will become more oligarchic. The machine will be enlarged, but the fewer, and often the more secret, will be the springs by which its motions are directed." --Publius (Madison or Hamilton) Federalist

" . . . I would have been glad had I been born into a village of two hundred souls and more than content never once in all my life to leave it--provided I could pick the two hundred . . . Well of course Laura Richards dwelt in my village. What a delight, what a refreshment, what nourishment it was to see her . . . . . What a triumphant life!" [the last line of the last letter Alexander Wollcott wrote]

[A community of] "outstanding equals . . . is heaven on earth--I think of my own college as being such a place--and I can think of nothing I wish for you more ardently than such a life. The traditional term for a community of excellent equals is a 'republic.' May you all have a chance to assist in the building of such a local republic--be it a family, school, church, neighborhood or city! . . . all these minirepublics have their ground, their economic and legal basis, in our great egalitarian democracy. And in this democracy, equality as a form of homogeneity is much more noisily defended than freedom." --Dean Eva Brann of St. John's College, Democractic Distinction.

"I find myself already at home, for the society of lettered men is a university which does not bound itself with the walls of one cloister or college, but gathers in the distant and solitary student into its strictest amity. . . 'I,' said the great-hearted Kepler, 'may well wait a hundred years for a reader, since God Almighty has waited six thousand years for an observer like myself.'" Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Scholar, An Oration Delivered Before the Washington and Jefferson Societies at the University of Virginia, 28 June 1876

[On philosophic societies and academic associations]: "There are at formal meetings moments when some demon of poetry or prophecy breaks through the conventions of academic routine; when a man speaks what is in his heart or, with extraordinary clarity and cogency, what is in his head; when there is a rapier thrust in discussion or when one has the sense that one is present at the birth or memorial to a great idea or tradition. . . . a communion not of saints but of minds has much to commend it. A communion is, as a matter of fact, only a sacramental way of speaking of a coterie. Such a communion of minds exists in essence already and has always existed . . . One has the sense of moving in parallel lines, of having touched the same beauties, shared the same truths, or nourished the same errors, found light by or aspired toward the stars." --Irwin Edman, Philosopher's Holiday.

"So why push for a schoolwide sense of educational community? What is wrong with islands of focused purpose within less purposeful institutions? Why force serious education on everyone if it is there for those who want it? . . . Most students, and not just a few should be pressed to develop intellectual habits and cognitive skills [because] first, as a practical matter we need a better educated populace for America. Second, if 'an educational community' is seen to be hostile to equality then neither excellence nor equity will prosper, third, a purposeful school community energizes teachers as well as students." --Arthur G. Powell, Lessons from Privilege: The American Prep School Tradition.

"So numerous and indeed so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so thoroughly persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy." --Publius [Alexander Hamilton], Federalist No. 1.

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form." Publius [James Madison], Federalist No. 55.

[On the causes of revolutions:] " . . . pride and avarice; fear; contempt, also city against country; poor against rich; sudden disproportion in the state due to demographic changes because of war or an influx of aliens; greed for land . . . .the greatest opposition is that of virtue and vice; next comes that of wealth and poverty; and there are other antagonistic elements, greater or less, of which one is a difference of location . . . just as in war, the impediment of a ditch, though ever so small may break a regiment, so every cause of difference, however slight, makes a breach in a city." --Aristotle, Politics

"It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."--Publius [James Madison] Federalist No. 10.

[On the end of history]: "But hope that we may, what reason have we for thinking that passion and self-interest, the root cause of armed conflict in men and in nations, will cease to operate; that anyone will surrender willingly what he has or not to try to get what he wants, in short, that human nature will ever become something other than what it is.? Is it really likely that the present balance of power will remain unchanged so long as the small want to become great, the strong to dominate the weak, the old to live on? . . . Is it possible to conceive of life without force? Only if children cease to be born, only if minds are sterilized, only if the world is reduced to immobility, can [force] be banished."--Charles de Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword.

"The means used to cause revolutions [overthrowing] constitutions are sometimes force and sometimes fraud. . . And the earliest government which existed among the Hellenes, after the overthrow of kingly power, grew up out of the warrior class, and was originally taken from the knights (for strength and superiority in war at that time depended on cavalry); indeed, without discipline, infantry are useless, and in ancient times there was no military knowledge or tactics and therefore the strength of armies lay in their cavalry. Neither is a city to be deemed happy or a legislator to be praised because he trains his citizens to conquer and obtain dominion over his neighbors, for there is great evil in this . . .Neither should men study war with a view toward enslavement of those who do not deserve to be enslaved; but first of all they should provide against their own enslavement, and in the second obtain empire for the good of the governed, and not for the sake of exercising a general despotism, and in the third they should seek to be masters only over those who deserve to be slaves. Facts, as well as arguments, prove that the legislator should direct all his military and other measures to the provision of leisure and the establishment of peace. For most of these military states are safe only while they are at war, but fall when they have acquired their empire; like unused iron they lose their edge in time of peace . . . . For peace as has often be repeated, is the end of war; and leisure of toil. . . . For men must engage in business and go to war, but leisure and peace are better; they must do what is necessary and useful, but what is honorable is better." --Aristotle, Politics.

"In any society, I submit, the aggressive and insistent will have disproportionate power. For myself, I confess I should like it otherwise; I prefer the still small voice of reason, but then I am constitutionally incompetent in such matters." Judge Learned Hand, Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities.

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like storm in the Atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, Feb. 22, 1787.

"There are few words which are more loosely used than the word 'civilization.' What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riots and tyrrany, give place to Parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization--and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. . .. Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly valued liberties and rights. " --Winston S. Churchill, Blood Sweat and Tears.

"It is a shame that War should have flung all [glory] aside in its greedy, base, opportunistic march, and should turn instead to chemists in spectacles, and chauffeurs pulling the levers of aeroplanes or machine guns . . . War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has become cruel and squalid. In fact it has become completely sploit. It is all the fault of Democracy and Science . . . from the moment Democracy was admitted to, or rather forced itself upon the battlefield, War ceased to be a gentleman's game. To Hell with it! Hence the League of Nations." --Winston Churchill, My Early Years

"But two or three generations of war and pestilence and revolution destroy culture with appalling rapidity. Among the northern sages who fought each other over the body of the Roman Empire, writing was not only uncommon. It was so rare that it was partly magic. The runes--which were really a northern European alphabet--could raise the dead, bewitch man or nature, and make warriors and even gods invincible. The word rune means 'a secret.' How barbarous were the people who believed that the purpose of writing was to keep a thing secret?" Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition

"The ease with which an individual, any individual, can share his opinions with the members of a huge electronic community is unprecedented . . . . I've seen bulletin boards collapse into foolishness after people start getting shrill . . . . But the shrill comments continue, and that destroys the sense of community." --Bill Gates

"I will always be grateful for the University of Florida [which, because of civil rights volunteeer work, drummed her out, incarcerated two of her friends in a mental ward, and either murdered one or drove him to suicide] for teaching me that those in power will do almost anything to stay in power. They will lie, cheat, steal and occasionally kill or drive people to their death. It matters little if they have a program to better the community or not.--Rita Mae Brown, Rita Will

"There is a paradox at the core of penology, and from it derive the thousand ills and afflictions of the prison system. It is not only that the worst of the young are sent to prison, but the best--that is, the proudest, the bravest, the most daring, the most enterprising, and the most undefeated of the poor . . . . Somewhere between the French Foreign Legion and some prodigious extension of Outward Bound may lie the answer, at least for those juvenile delinquents who are drawn to crime as a positive experience--because it is more exciting, more meaningful, more mysterious, more transcendental, more religious than any other experience they have known. . . . Novels and the cinema teach more about how to commit successful crimes than anyone could possibly learn in prisons. . . What is forced down [prisoners'] throats in spite of themselves is the will to commit crimes. It is the capability I am speaking of [emphasis in original]. This is what leads to killing . . . over a seemingly trivial matter. All the violence in prisons is geared for murder, nothing else. You can't have someone with ill feelings for you walking around. He could drop a knife in you every day . . . You learn to 'smile' him into position. To disarm him with friendliness . . . A knife is an intimate weapon. Very personal. It unsettles the mind because you are not killing in physical self-defense. You're killing someone in order to live respectably in prison. Let's say someone steals from your cell. . . . that is moral self-defense [emphasis in original].' --Jack Henry Abbott, In The Belly Of The Beast

"It is very rare, in Italy, for murders to occur without some kind of a background. Italy functions by the action of various tightly circumscribed groups, so that an individual has significance and power, not in himself, but as representative or member of a particular circle. These structures probably derive from the ancient Roman concept of gens, a social group including not only blood relatives but also assimilated friends, dependants, business acquaintances--and even servants . . . . No job, no position of any importance, can be filled in Italy without some kind of raccomandazione. . . . at last [the Carabiniri General] Dalla Chiesa was beginning to understand the social background of the act of murder in Italy. A vacuum had to be created around the victim, he said, detaching him from any group of people who would be offended by his death, and who might revenge it in the future . . . The victim died alone, severed from all those ties which, in a sense, made him human." --Matthew Spender, Within Tuscany-Reflections on a Time and Place.

"The theories on the reform of prisoners are vague and uncertain. It is not yet known to what degree the wicked may be regenerated, and by what means this regeneration may be obtained: but if the efficiency of the prison in correcting the prisoners is yet doubtful, its power of depraving them still more is known, because experience proves it." --Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, On the Penitentiary System in the United States.