Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes
A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what ; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.
Stanhope, Philip Dormer. Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to His Son. J. Dodsley, 1774.
Even in free America, Allen had a very difficult time getting this work printed because it was so controversial culturally. He argued that existing religions contribute to superstitious fears of the population.
This failing of human nature occurs very frequently in politics. Global Warming was an example, There were many intelligent and skilled politicians who just would not accept the reality that man’s activities on Earth were having an effect on the climate. If they did accept that truth, then the implications would have been profound and much legislation would be required which would limit the freedom of people and companies to do many things. Industries would have to have additional regulations. Government spending would be needed to protect many cities by building up infrastructure. For the Liberal, none of these steps was a major problem. But to a Conservative, all the steps that would have to be taken, were anathema to his/her ideological beliefs. So it would take much more courage for a Conservative to accept the truth of Global Warming, than for a Liberal. Few Conservatives had that courage and there was a political schism over a scientific reality that neither Liberals or Conservatives could understand. The fact that 98 percent of all the scientists who deal with climate, explained that Global Warming was a reality, did not matter to the Conservatives. There are many examples where Liberals would not accept realistic truth for a long time, like the fact that Russia had become a totalitarian dictatorship. And then there have been many issues where virtually all the politicians would not accept truth. An example was the pre WWII rise of Hitler and Fascism. Most American politicians would not accept the fact that eventually we would have to war against Fascism, and there were almost no politicians who would support spending more taxpayer money to build up the military. It took Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War on America to make the politicians face reality.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was a British statesman, and a man of letters, and wit. Educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he subsequently embarked on the Grand Tour of the Continent, to complete his education as a nobleman, by exposure to the cultural legacies of Classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to become acquainted with his aristocratic counterparts and the polite society of Continental Europe.
