Monday, February 19, 2007

Tyranny Defined


Via Andrew Sullivan:

"Tyranny starts as a habit; it has the tendency to, and generally finally does develop into a disease. I believe that habit may coarsen and stultify the very best of men, reducing them to the level of brutes. Blood and power make a man drunk: callous coarseness and depravity develop in him; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible, and in the end pleasurable to the mind and the senses. The human being and the citizen perish forever in the tyrant, and a return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration becomes practically impossible for him," - Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, "Memoirs from the House of the Dead."

theteach :(


1 comment:

Enemy of the Republic said...

Good use of the text, but I am afraid that Doestovesky would like Bush at the latter stage of his career.