segunda-feira, março 29, 2004
Na sequência do que venho dizendo
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«The Great War, and its aftermath of dictatorships, has caused many to underestimate all forms of power except military and governamental force. This is a short-sighted and unhistorical view. If I had to select four men who have had more power than any others, I should mention Buddha and Christ, Pythagoras and Galileo. No one of these four had the support of the State until his propaganda had achieved a great measure of success. No one of the four had much success in his own lifetime. No one of the four would have affected human life as he has done if power had been his primary object. No one of the four sought the kind of power that enslaves others, but the kind that sets them free -- in the case of the first two, by showing how to master the desires that lead to strife, and hence to defeat slavery and subjection; in the case of the second two, by pointing the way towards control of natural forces. It is not ultimately by violence that men are ruled, but by the wisdom of those who appeal to the common desires of mankind, for happiness, for inward and outward peace, and for the understanding of the world in which, by no choice of our own, we have to live» (Bertrand Russell, Power, 1938)
