Quote that wot I liked.

I read as much as I can, and quite often I'll be reading something of a philosophical/political persuasion and think ooh I like the sound of that. It sums up something you've been grasping to understand in a few sentances or even better says something profound that hitherto wasn't even on your radar. At this point I often think I need to note this down and share it with other people. Usually however I forget which page it was on and as i'm in the middle of reading I don't stop there and don't exactly forget about it but don't have the patience to go looking for it. Today however I was fortunate enough to be finishing more or less at the page where i saw latest thing that grabbed me.

It's from Power by Bertrand Russell and is as follows....

...,"Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster on all sane men within their reach. The success of insanity, in literature, in philosophy, and in politics, is one of the pecularities of our age, and the successful form of insanity proceeds almost entirely from impulses towards power."