Lessons

Yet, the painful lessons we would like to forget are precisely the ones which should be kept for reference.  Santayana has reminded us that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and not without reason did Plato declare that a philosopher much have a good memory.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

Men at Work

An employer was recently heard to remark that we have plenty of persons today who can tell us why a machine will not work but none will tell us why men will not work.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Spoiled Child and Consumption

The spoiled child is simply one who has been allowed to believe that his consumptive faculty can prescribe the order of society.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

What the World Owes

If cities encourage man to believe that he is superior to the limitations of nature, science encourages him to believe that he is exempt from labor.  In effect, what modern man is being told is that the world owes him a living.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

The 1960s

I can just see, having done arbitration in the industrial scene, that the employers will love this generation, that they are not going to press very many grievances, there won't be much trouble, they are going to do their jobs, they are going to be easy to handle. There aren't going to be riots. There aren't going to be revolutions. There aren't going to be many strikes.

Source: Clark Kerr, Spotlight on the college student, 1959
Taken From: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997 pg169

Egotism

All persons chronically diseased are egotists, whether the disease be of the mind or the body; whether it be sin, sorrow, or merely the more tolerable calamity of some endless pain, or mischief among the cords of mortal life.  Such individuals are made acutely conscious of self, by the torture in which it dwells.  Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an object with them that they cannot but present it to the face of every casual passer-by.

Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent, 1843
Taken From: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948