Antonio Escohotado Quotes

“And the game is a game, even if it seems like a pleonasm. It belongs to that sphere of disinterested things: like art, it is a disinterested contemplation of reality. It is played for the same reason that one laughs, or loves.”

“Autonomy is the least gratuitous thing in this world, and if it is not conquered on a daily basis, it immediately leads to situations of grievance and servitude. There were and are only tyrants because others preferred and prefer to surrender to fear rather than run the risk of fighting.”

“Conformism is the modern form of pessimism.”

“Converted into an information society, a large part of the world is less exposed than before to peoples chosen by God or earthly autocrats, although the pretexts for defending discord are constantly being renewed, and turning inferiority complexes into supremacism.”

“Freedom, which in its initial stages calls for insubordination, matures as a feeling of enjoyment before itself.”

“Generally, capitalism needs democracy more than democracy needs capitalism.”

“He who seeks the known does not seek knowledge.”

“If morality wanted to rely on legal sanctions, it would promote hypocritical habits, and if the law wanted to sanction morality, it would become sectarian, promoting contempt for its laws.”

“In contrast to our predecessors, we now know that what is discarded as chaotic can be a source of a deeper and more fertile order than any organization based on voices of command and dogma.”

“In exchange for an always uncertain future, we do not queue to receive the monthly ration of rice, butter or housing established by some autocrat, but rather each one launches himself to fulfill personal aspirations, weaving a web of services that elevates previously unthinkable extremes level and life expectancy for individuals and groups.”

“Only from time to time agreements not based on paranoid reinforcements flourish.”

“Philosophical schools basically debated two issues. In general, if the wine had been given to humans to drive them mad or for their good, and in particular, if – as the Stoics claimed – the sage could drink without limit, until he fell asleep, before being led to some foolishness”

“Science is a myth, only it is the most beautiful myth, the only one generalizable to the entire species and perhaps the most worthy of being respected.”

“The greatest nonsense of our ancestors was to imagine that fundamental things arise by creative decree (divine or governmental) and are extinguished by repealing decree (divine or governmental), when in reality they spring from an impersonal human spirit forced without pause to learn from its mistakes, within random processes that constitute the history of their own freedom.”

“The path leading to truth is of infinitely greater interest than one truth or another.”

“The truth defends itself, the lie needs help from the government.”

“Thomas Jefferson, founding father of the United States, expressed it with extraordinary clarity in 1782: The claim that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws, does not seem sufficiently demolished. The government's legitimate powers only extend to acts that injure others. Millions of innocent men, women, and children have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned since Christianity was introduced. What has been the effect of the violence? To make half of the world stupid and the other half hypocritical, to support knavery and error all over the earth.”

“Are there any enemies of the people apart from the people itself?”

“There is no health without boldness, without courage, just as there can be no devotion or even affection towards others.”

“We are all wood, and the fire is eternal.”

“Whoever seeks the known does not seek knowledge.”

“Hatred of the scientific attitude characterizes the ignorant and resentful.”

“Western optimism starts from trusting evolution, even if this process is pure risk.”