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The difficulties he foresaw were so formidable that he quickly banished the disagreeable subject from his mind.
--
Pt. II, Ch. XIV

 

Gustave Flaubert

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A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted before we effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, and for ages so inscrutable as the direct action of mind on mind. This delicate task needs a rigorous employment of the method of exclusion — a constant setting aside of irrelevant phenomena that could be explained by known causes, including those far too familiar causes, conscious and unconscious fraud. The inquiry unites the difficulties inherent in all experimentation connected with mind, with tangled human temperaments, and with observations dependent less on automatic record than on personal testimony. But difficulties are things to be overcome even in the elusory branch of research known as experimental psychology.

 

William Crookes

 

There was nothing languid or easygoing about Enoch Powell...he was probably the most intellectually formidable of the men who have passed through the Research Department. He took an interest in almost every subject, and on almost every subject he had a strong and pungently expressed views. Only some of these were eccentric...Powell has an inventive mind. He has also a warm heart and I think it a thousand pities that he ever made his first notable speech on immigration, when the Tiber was to run with blood. This led him on to an incurable rift with his own party leaders which has been made wider by the variety of causes of schism which he espouses. Powell could be a most valuable lieutenant instead of a lost assailant, and this is a pity.

 

Enoch Powell

 

When the Levite on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem passed by the unfortunate man who had been assaulted by robbers, it perhaps occurred to him when he was still a little distance from the unfortunate man that it would indeed be beautiful to help the sufferer. He may even have already thought of how rewarding such a good deed is in itself; he perhaps was riding more slowly because he was immersed in thought; but as he came closer, the difficulties became apparent, and he rode past. Now he probably rode fast in order to get ways quickly, away from the thought of the riskiness of the road, away from the thought of the possible nearness of the robbers, and ways from the thought of how easily the victim could confuse him with the robbers who had left him lying there. Consequently he did not act. But suppose that along the way repentance brought him back; suppose that he quickly turned around, fearing neither robbers nor other difficulties, fearing only to arrive too late. Suppose that he did come too late, inasmuch as the compassionate Samaritan had already had the sufferer brought to the inn-had he, then, not acted? Assuredly, and yet he did not act in the external world. Let us take the religious action. To have faith in God-does that mean to think about how glorious it must be to have faith, to think about what peace and security faith can give? Not at all. Even to wish, where the interest, the subject’s interest, is far more evident, is not to have faith, is not to act. The individual’s relation to the thought-action is still continually only a possibility that he can give up.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

Freedom of the press, subject only to liability for personal injuries. This formidable censor of the public functionaries, by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.

 

Thomas Jefferson

 

We have two distinct types of political organization to take into account; and clearly, too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore when we include both types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties; difficulties of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which, until within the last half-century, none of them has tried to resolve.

 

Albert Jay Nock