The Wisdom Letter #293

5 quotes from Aleksandr Pushkin, John Ruskin, and more.

✹ For today’s edition of Wisdom Letter, we have carefully curated five bite-sized quotes from brilliant thinkers such as Aleksandr Pushkin and John Ruskin, each paired with a philosophical question designed to provoke deep reflection.

Quote № 01:

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”

— Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837)

~ Follow-up Question:

Can the deliberate maintenance of a false belief ever be ethically justified if it contributes to individual happiness or social cohesion, or does truth possess an intrinsic moral value that ought never to be compromised?

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Quote № 02:

“It is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert.”

— John Ruskin (1819–1900), “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”

~ Follow-up Question:

In what ways does the normalization of subtle and well-intentioned deceit obscure our understanding of ourselves and the world, and how might the occasional uncovering of truth be experienced as both liberating and destabilizing?

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Quote № 03:

“Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius?”

— Leó Szilárd (1898–1964), “The Voice of the Dolphins: And Other Stories”

~ Follow-up Question:

Imagine a society where the policies of a highly knowledgeable minority are consistently overridden by the preferences of a largely uninformed majority. Does such a scenario still fulfill the ideals of democracy, or does it devolve into a tyranny of ignorance masked as collective freedom?

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Quote № 04:

“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”

— William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

~ Follow-up Question:

In what ways might a society governed primarily by sentiment rather than reason foster deeper empathy and solidarity, and what dangers could arise from allowing the heart to dictate without intellectual scrutiny?

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Quote № 05:

“Men fight for liberty, and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”

— D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), “Liberty's old story”

~ Follow-up Question:

How does the cyclical loss and reclamation of liberty across generations reflect broader historical patterns of complacency, and what does this suggest about the fragility of freedom in the absence of continual vigilance and struggle?

✽ Thank you for reading today’s Wisdom Letter.

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Maze Heart, the curator of Philosophors