There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal,organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance – and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected,if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle.These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in them-selves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing,sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius,Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus,Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.
(Isaiah Berlin, TheHedgehog and the Fox)
"Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse — would be any worse — than to make him into a slave — than it was to enact the Fugitive Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.
(…)
The foul slime
stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant
flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are
immortal.
Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented
flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they
are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not
complain that they live, but that they do not get buried.
Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure."
Slavery in Massachusetts
by Henry David Thoreau
HDT (Esclavitud en Massachusetts)
TYRANNY IS IN THE BLOOD AND EVERYWHERE
— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) November 23, 2021
Wait not till slaves pronounce the word
by Henry David #Thoreau
Wait not till slaves pronounce the word
To set the captive free,
Be free yourselves, be not deferred,
And farewell slavery. https://t.co/9Mz4f9GPHn
A cada uno su propia esperanza
Spes sibi quisque
WAIT NOT TILL SLAVES PRONOUNCE THE WORD
No esperes hasta que los esclavos pronuncien la palabra
para liberar a los cautivos,
se libre por tí mismo, que no te confinen,
y dí adios a la esclavitud.
Vosotros sóis todos esclavos, tenéis vuestro precio,
y os reunís sólo para reunir lamentos,
entonces se alza,
el más valioso se alza,
oigo sonar sus grilletes.
No pienses que el tirano se sienta lejos
en tu propio pecho tienes
el Distrito de Columbia
y el poder para liberar al Esclavo.
El corazón más cálido alimenta el norte,
está todavía demasiado frío y lejano,
la liberación del hombre de color debe venir
del Africa rechazada.
Apresúrate y libera al cautivo
¿Eres tan libre que sólo te lamentas? La esclavitud más profunda y rastrera
abandona la libertad por un suspiro.
Wait not till slaves pronounce the word by Henry David Thoreau
Wait not till slaves pronounce the word
To set the captive free,
Be free yourselves, be not deferred,
And farewell slavery.
Ye are all slaves, ye have your price,
And gang but cries to gang.
Then rise, the highest of ye rise,
I hear your fetters clang.
Think not the tyrant sits afar
In your own breasts ye have
The District of Columbia
And power to free the Slave.
The warmest heart the north doth breed,
Is still too cold and far,
The colored man's release must come
From outcast Africa.
Make haste & set the captive free!—
Are ye so free that cry? The lowest depths of slavery
Leave freedom for a sigh.
#THOREAU@WallStreetSilv
— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) April 21, 2024
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a #peaceablerevolution, if any such is possible.
Henry David Thoreau https://t.co/hBnywSFioX
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