The wisdom to discern what is essentially and actually right and reasonable in the real world. |
Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. |
What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it |
Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable. |
When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses. |