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ERROR
ETHICS --- EUROPE
EUGENICS/EUTHANASIA --- EVIDENCE

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ERROR

see: "ILLUSIONS"
see: "MISTAKES" for other related links


An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.
--Henri Frιdιrick Amiel (1821—1881)
Swiss critic.
_Journal Intime_ [1883], entry of 12 November 1852.

An error doesn't become a mistake
until you refuse to correct it.
--Orlando A. Battista (1917—1995)
Canadian-American chemist and author.
_How to Enjoy Work and Get More Fun Out of Life_ [1957]

Whatever is only almost true is quite false, and among
the most dangerous of errors, because being so near
truth, it is the more likely to lead astray.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister; brother of
Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.
Attributed in Tryon Edwards _A Dictionary of Thoughts_, p. 149 [1908 ed.].

It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake,
but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to
it when discovered. Or, as the Chinese better say,
'The glory is not in never falling, but in rising
every time you fall.'
--Christian Nestell Bovee (1820—1904)
American writer.
_Intuitions and Summaries of Thought_, p. 55 [1862]

There is something to be said for every error; but,
whatever may be said for it, the most important
thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
_The Illustrated London News_ [25 April 1931]

To err is human, but to persevere
in error is only the act of a fool.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC)
Roman orator and statesman.
_Philippicoe_, XII, 2

Truth is a good dog; but beware of barking too close to
the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
English poet, critic, and philosopher.
Henry Nelson Coleridge (ed.)
_Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge_ [1835]

None but the well-bred man knows how to
confess a fault, or acknowledge himself in
error.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
_Poor Richard's Almanack_ [November 1738]

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
--John Kenneth Galbraith (1908—2006)
American economist.
Quoted in _Anglo American Trade News_, vol. 15 [1976].

Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it: and as he
is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to
say; for error is ever talkative.
--Oliver Goldsmith (1728—1774)
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and dramatist.
_The Traveller: Or, A Prospect of Society [1764].

Admitting Error clears the Score
And proves you Wiser than before.
--Arthur Gutterman (1871—1943)
"Of Apology"

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are
dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
--David Hume (1711—1776)
Scottish philosopher.
_A Treatise of Human Nature_, bk I [1739]

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
--T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley (1825—1895)
English biologist {grandfather of Aldous Huxley}.
_The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species_ [1880]

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote
from the truth who believes nothing, than he who
believes what is wrong.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
_Notes on the State of Virginia_ [1784], Query 6

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error,
and another to put him in possession of truth.
--John Locke (1632—1704)
English political and educational philosopher.
_An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_, bk. 4, ch. 7, sec. II [1690]

Look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807—1882)
American poet.
_Hyperion_, bk. IV, ch. 3 [1839]

If a man makes a slip, admonish him gently and show
him his mistake. If you fail to convince him, blame
yourself, or else blame nobody.
--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121—180)
Roman emperor [161—180] and Stoic philosopher.
_Meditations_ Book X, Number 4

The man who makes no mistakes
does not usually make anything.
--Edward John Phelps (1822—1900)
American lawyer and diplomat.
Speech at Mansion House, London [24 January 1889].
Also attributed to Bishop W.C. Magee

The highest of characters, in my estimation, is his, who is as ready
to pardon the moral errors of mankind, as if he were every day guilty
of some himself; and at the same time as cautious of committing a
fault as if he never forgave one.
--Pliny the Younger or Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (62—c.115)
Roman senator and author of a famous collection of letters.
_Epistles_, VIII, 22

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To Err is Human; to Forgive, Divine.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
_An Essay on Criticism_ [1711]

& note:

To err is human; to blame it on the
other guy is even more human.
--anon.

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From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.
--Publilius Syrus (85—43 B.C.)
Latin writer of mimes who was originally a slave.
Attributed in _A Dictionary of Select and Popular Quotations_,
[Pub.: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, Philadelphia, 6th ed., 1869.]

Errors to be dangerous must have a great deal of
truth mingled with them; it is only from this alliance
that they can ever obtain an extensive circulation;
from pure extravagance, and genuine, unmingled
falsehood, the world never has, and never can
sustain any mischief.
--Sydney Smith (1771—1845)
English clergyman and essayist,
in 1802 cofounded "The Edinburgh Review."
"Introductory Lecture" in the _Elementary Sketches of Moral
Philosophy_, delivered at the Royal Institution, London [1804].

If a crooked stick is before you, you need not
explain how crooked it is. Lay a straight one
down by the side of it, and the work is well
done. Preach the truth, and error will stand
abashed in its presence.
--Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834—1892)
English nonconformist preacher.
Quoted in John H. Aughey _Spiritual Gems of The Ages_ [1886].

-

From the "New Yorker":

The "Modesto Bee" (CA) made a major blunder
last year [in 2003]. The following is a correction
which ran the following day:

"Gustav Mahler will not play with the
Stockton Symphony this season, as
reported on Page E-5 on Sunday. He
died in 1911."

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It takes less time to do a thing right than
it does to explain why you did it wrong.
--anon
"The American Gas Light Journal" [24 July 1911]

-----

apocryphal (adj.) [κ-'pah-krκ-fκl]
Of unknown origin hence of questionable authenticity,
spurious; non-canonical; erroneous.



ETHICS

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see: "MORALITY"
see: "RIGHT & WRONG"
see: "CHARACTER" for other related links


That you may retain your self-respect, it is better
to displease the people by doing what you know
is right, than to temporarily please them by doing
what you know is wrong.
--Rev. William John Henry Boetcker (1873—1962)
German-born American minister and author.
Quoted in "Forbes" [1948]

(Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.)
Grub first, then ethics.
--Bertolt Brecht (1898—1956)
German dramatist.
(Translation by W.H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden (1907-1973).)

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A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually
on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious
basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor
way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
and hope of reward after death.
--Albert Einstein (1879—1955)
German-American physicist.
"Religion and Science" in _New York Times Magazine_ [9 November 1930]


Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.
--attributed to Albert Einstein (1879—1955)
German-American physicist who developed the
special and general theories of relativity.

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We still hold two sets of ethics, pagan and
Christian, simultaneously. For instance, we
say that we should love our enemies and not
resist evil; yet at the same time we believe
in justice, and that criminals ought to be
punished, and that we should meet force with
force, violence with violence. One another
instance: we believe in humility; but we also
believe in masculine pride and self-assertion.
I think that this spiritual conflict creates
a strain in our psychology and in the heart
of our culture, that has been extremely fruitful
both of good and evil, of greatness and intensity,
as well as of self-contradiction and hypocrisy
and frustration. This theme of spiritual civil
war appears often in my verses.
--Robinson Jeffers (1897—1962)
American poet.
_Themes in My Poems_ [1956]

Ethics may be defined as the obligations of morality.
--Lajos Kossuth (1802—1894)
Hungarian lawyer and journalist.
Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Edge-Tools of Speech_, p. 136 [1886].

To educate a person in mind and not in
morals is to educate a menace to society.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
In Stephen Bates, "A Textbook of Virtues", _New York Times_ [8 Januarary 1995].

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good
to maintain and further life; it is bad to damage
and destroy life.
--Albert Schweitzer (1875—1965)
Franco-German theologian, philosopher, and mission doctor.
"Religion and Modern Civilization" (essay) [1934]

Always do right. This will gratify
some people, and astonish the rest.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
Note to the Young People's Society,
Greenpoint Presbyterian Church,
Brooklyn, N.Y. [16 February 1901].



EUROPE

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see: "PLACES" for related links


We are with Europe but not of it. We are
linked but not comprised. We are interested
and associated but not absorbed.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].
Speech in Zurich [19 September 1946].


I love France and Belgium, but we must
not allow ourselves to be pulled down
to that level.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].
1953 comment to his doctor; in Alfred Grosser _The Western
Alliance: European-American Relations since 1945_ p. 121 [1980].

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Belgium has only one real claim to fame. Thanks to all the wars
that have been fought on its soil, there are more dead people
there than anywhere else in the world. So, while there's no
quality of life in Belgium, there is a simply wonderful quality
of death.
--Jeremy Clarkson (b. 1960)
British journalist and broadcaster.
In "Sunday Times" [18 July 1999].

They're Germans. Don't mention the war.
--John Cleese (b. 1939)
British comedian and actor, and Connie Booth,
_Fawlty Towers_ "The Germans" [1975 BBC TV program]

The presence of the Turks in Europe has been a source
of unmitigated evil to everybody concerned. I am not
aware of a single interest, Turkish or otherwise, that
during nearly 500 years has benefited by that presence.
Indeed the record is one of misrule, oppression, intrigue
and massacre, almost unparalleled in the history of the
Eastern world.
--George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon (1859—1925)
British statesman, viceroy of India (1898—1905), and foreign secretary [1917—1924].
(Minutes of a meeting of the British cabinet's Eastern
Committee (Curzon was chairman) [23 December 1918].)

Wherever the European has trod, death seems to
pursue the aboriginal. We may look to the wide
extent of the Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good
Hope and Australia, and we find the same result.
--Charles Darwin (1809—1882)
English naturalist.
_The Voyage of the Beagle_, ch. 19 [1839]

The peace of Europe is the cornerstone of world peace.
Within a single generation Europe has now been the
focal center of two world conflicts which were due
above all to the existence on this continent of thirty
sovereign states. This anarchy must be remedied by
the creation of a Federal Union between the
European peoples.
--Draft Declaration of the European Resistance Movements [July 1944],
in _Richard Vaughan_ (ed.) _Post-War Integration in Europe_, p. 18 [1976].

When posterity recounts the achievements of Europe, shall
we let men say that three centuries of painstaking cultural
effort carried us no further than from the fanaticism of
religion to the insanity of nationalism? It would seem that
men always seek some idiotic fiction in the name of which
they can hate one another. Once it was religion; now it is
the State.
--Albert Einstein (1879—1955)
German-American physicist who developed the
special and general theories of relativity.
In A. P. French (ed.) _Einstein: A Centenary Volume_ [1979].

Leave this Europe where they are never done
talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere
they find them.
--Frantz Fanon (1925—1961)
French West Indian psychoanalyst.
_The Wretched of the Earth_ [1961]

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"The Widening Atlantic"
--Niall Ferguson,
_The Atlantic Monthly_ [January/February 2005]

Seldom, if ever, has an American president been less popular
in Europe than George W. Bush. As cartoonists never tire of
illustrating, he embodies those American characteristics that
Europeans most dislike: trigger-happiness, environmental
unfriendliness, and — perhaps most important — utter indifference
to the delicate sensibilities of America's traditional Western
European allies. In the past two years, according to a survey
published this past fall by the German Marshall Fund, the
proportion of Europeans who disapprove of US. foreign policy
has risen by 20 percentage points, to exceed 76 percent. An
even higher proportion — 80 percent — think that Bush's invasion
of Iraq was not worth the consequences. And 73 percent think
that it has increased rather than reduced the risk of terrorism.

According to a poll conducted by Globescan and the University
of Maryland, 74 percent of Germans wanted to see John Kerry
beat Bush in November, while only 10 percent favored the
president. Even in the United Kingdom the public backed Kerry
over Bush by 47 percent to 16 percent. During the campaign
Kerry sought to capitalize on his popularity abroad, claiming
repeatedly that if elected, he could persuade unspecified allies
to assist the United States in Iraq. We will never know what
a Kerry administration might have accomplished. But it is hard
to imagine that it could have healed the transatlantic rift, for the
gap between America and Europe has been widening for fifteen
years, and it has much more to do with changes in Europe than
with the policies of the United States.

This is not a fashionable view, least of all in academic circles. A
clear majority of those who think, write, and talk about international
relations for a living believe that the transatlantic alliance system —
what used to be known simply as "the West" — can and must be
restored, by means of adjustments in U.S. policy.

The Oxford historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash argues in
his new book, Free World, that the United States and the European
Union have too many common interests to become permanently
estranged. He sees "no inexorable drifting apart of two solid
continental plates" but, rather, "over-lapping continental shelves."
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Robert E. Hunter, a senior
adviser to the RAND Corporation and a former US. ambassador
to NATO, also called for a shoring up of the Atlantic alliance. The
Bush administration's "experiment in unilateralism," he wrote, had
merely revealed "the limits of such an approach." Kenneth Pollack,
a member of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton and
now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, urges the Bush
administration to work in tandem with the Europeans to curb Iran's
nuclear ambitions.

Nevertheless, there are three strong reasons for doubting that real
transatlantic rapprochement is possible. First, we must not forget
the primary reason for the formation of the transatlantic alliance,
in the 1940s and 1950s: to keep the Soviet Union behind the Iron
Curtain. We should not deceive ourselves that the French and the
Germans — or, for that matter, the British were passionately pro-
American during the Cold War. But as long as a Russian empire
was menacing Western Europe with missiles, troops, and spooks,
there was an overwhelming practical argument for the unity of the
West.

With astonishing speed, that ceased to be the case fifteen years
ago, when the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev caused the Soviet
empire to crumble. Incentives for transatlantic harmony have grown
steadily weaker since 1989. President Vladimir Putin is manifestly
no democrat, but not even his fiercest critics expect him to launch
a Russian invasion across the Central European plains in the near
future.

The second reason the West is unlikely to come back together is
the difference in the ways Europe and the United States assess the
risk of Islamic extremism. To Americans, Islamism has effectively
replaced Soviet communism as a mortal danger. To Europeans,
the threat of Islamic terrorists today is simply not comparable to that
posed by the Red Army twenty years ago — not great enough, in other
words, to require transatlantic solidarity under US. leadership. Indeed,
ever since the Spanish elections early last year, many Europeans
have behaved as if the optimal response to the growing threat of
Islamist terrorism is to distance Europe from the United States.

Why? The answer is not far to seek. As a result of rising immigration
from the south and the east, there are now at least 15 million Muslims
within the European Union, and some say more than 20 million: that
is, anything between three and five percent of the population. [ . . . ]

So Europe is not only demographically vulnerable to Islamic
penetration; it is also politically vulnerable. And perhaps even more
important, Europe is religiously vulnerable too.

This headlong secularization is as big a story, in its way, as Europe's
demographic decline. According to the Gallup International Millennium
Survey of religious observance (conducted in 1999), 48 percent of
people living in Western Europe almost never go to church; the figure
for Eastern Europe is just a little lower, at 44 percent. In the Netherlands,
Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark fewer than 15 percent now
attend church at least once a month. Only in Catholic Italy and Ireland
do more than a third of the people worship monthly or more often.

European faith, too, as distinct from churchgoing, has waned quite
dramatically in recent years. According to Gallup, 49 percent of Danes,
52 percent of Norwegians, and 55 percent of Swedes regard God as
irrelevant to their lives. The proportion of Czechs who take this view
is even higher. For whatever reason, Western Europeans living under
Christian democracy or social democracy appear to have moved away
from Christianity almost as rapidly as Eastern Europeans who used to
live under "real existing socialism." In the words of the new Spanish
prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, even traditionally
Catholic Spaniards want "more sports, less religion."

What makes the de-Christianization of Europe so intriguing is that it
cannot be explained by rising living standards; that theory collapses
in the face of the contemporaneous vigor of Christianity in the United
States. American religious observance is significantly higher than
European; so is American religious faith. More than twice as big a
percentage of Americans as Europeans attend religious services
once a week or more. Some 62 percent of Americans believe
in a personal God; little more than a third of Europeans do. Scarcely
any Americans — compared with 15 percent of Europeans — can be
characterized as atheists. Try to imagine George W. Bush calling for
"more sports, less religion."

It is not so much, then, that militaristic Americans are from Mars and
pacifistic Europeans from Venus. It would be more accurate to say
that from an evangelical point of view, Americans are bound for heaven
and Europeans for hell. At the very least, the rapid decline of European
Christianity helps to explain why European conservatism has so little
in common with the conservatism of the American right.

All this helps to explain, in turn, why in so many recent surveys
Europeans have expressed a desire for a foreign policy less dependent
on the United States. In the absence of the Soviet Union, in the presence
of increasing numbers of Muslims, and in light of their own secularization,
European societies feel more detached from the United States than at
any other time since the 1930s.

In a recent Gallup poll 61 percent of Europeans said they thought the
EU plays a positive role with regard to "peace in the world" (while just
eight percent said its role was negative). But a remarkable 50 percent
took the view that the United States now plays a negative role. Compare
that with American attitudes: 59 percent of Americans regard the United
States as making a positive contribution to world peace, and just 15
percent think the EU plays a negative role.

In the face of this kind of asymmetry it is well nigh impossible to turn
back the clock to those halcyon days when there was just one West,
indivisible. John Kerry would have tried, but he would have failed.
George W. Bush has lower expectations of transatlantic relations.
But he should not be blamed for their deterioration. His much
exaggerated "unilateralism" is not why the Atlantic seems a little
wider every day. It is Europe, not America, that is drifting away.

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America, you have it better than
our continent, the old one.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
German poet, novelist, and playwright.
_Almanac for the Muses_ [1831]

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we
shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
--Sir Edward Grey (1862—1933)
British Liberal politician.
Remark on the eve of the First World War [3 August 1914], in _25 Years_ [1925].

Look at the development of the populations in Europe where
Moslems are breeding like Mosquitoes. Every western woman
produces on average 1.4 children. Every Moslem woman in
the same countries produce 3.5 children. In the year 2050,
30 percent of the population of Europe will be Moslems.
--Mullah Krekar, Dagbladet [13 February 2006]

Europe will be part of the Arab west, the Maghreb. Migration and
demography indicate this. Europeans marry late and have few or
no children. But there's strong immigration: Turks in Germany,
Arabs in France and Pakistanis in England. They marry early and
have many children. Following current trends, Europe will have
Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the 21st century
at the latest.
--Bernard Lewis (b. 1916)
British-born American professor and Middle-Eastern scholar.
In an interview with _Die Welt_ (German newspaper)
"Europa wird am Ende des Jahrhunderts islamisch sein," [28 July 2004].

The immense popularity of American movies abroad
demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative
of which America is the proof.
--Mary McCarthy (1912—1989)
American novelist.
_On the Contrary_ [1961]

Whereas in England all is permitted that is
not expressly prohibited, it has been said that
in Germany all is prohibited unless expressly
permitted and in France all is permitted that
is expressly prohibited. In the European Common
Market no one knows what is permitted and it
all costs more.
--Robert Megarry (1910—2006)
British lawyer and judge.
"Law and Lawyers in a Permissive Society", lecture [22 March 1972],
as quoted in Fred R. Shapiro (ed.) _The Yale Book of Quotations_ [2006].

When Paris sneezes, the rest of Europe catches a cold.
--Klemens Wenzel von Metternich (1773—1859)
Austrian politician and statesman.
1830 remark quoted in "Journal of Politics" [August 1949].

On the Continent people have good food;
in England people have good table manners.
--George Mikes (1912—1987)
Hungarian-born British author.
_How to Be an Alien_ [1946]

I want the whole of Europe to have one
currency; it will make trading much easier.
--Napoleon I (1769—1821)
Emperor of France [1804—1815].
Letter to his brother Louis [6 May 1807].

In my lifetime all our problems have come from
mainland Europe and the solutions have come
from the English-speaking nations of the world.
--Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [1979—1990].
At the Conservative conference, "The Times" [10 September 1999].



EUGENICS/EUTHANASIA

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see: "DEATH" for related links


Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic
pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor
of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should
be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasia
institutions supplied with proper gases. A similar treatment could
be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts.
Modern society should not hesitate to organise itself with reference
to the normal individual. Philosophical systems and sentimental
prejudices must give way before such a necessity. The development
of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilization.
--Alexis Carrel (1873—1944)
French surgeon, sociologist, and biologist who
received the 1912 Nobel Prize for Psysiology or Medicine.
In _Man, the Unknown_ [1935]

-

Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr Brandt are entrusted
with the responsibility of extending the rights of
specially designated physicians, such that patients
who are judged incurable after the most thorough
review of their condition which is possible, can be
granted mercy killing.
--Adolf Hitler (1889—1945)
German dictator.
Late Oct. 1939.
(Authorization for the euthanasia of mentally handicapped people.)
In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 831 [2004].

& see:

If it is once accepted that people have the right to
kill 'unproductive' fellow humans — then as a *matter
of principle* murder is permitted for all unproductive
people, in other words for the incurably sick, the
people who have become invalids through labor
and war, for us all when we become old, frail and
therefore unproductive ... Woe to mankind, woe to
our German nation if God's holy commandment
'Thou shalt not kill' ... is not only broken, but if this
transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to
go unpunished.
--Bishop of Munster, Cardinal Count August von Galen (1878—1946)
Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
Sermon [3 August 1941]

& see:

I am quite sure that a man like the Bishop von Galen knows that
after the war I shall exact retribution down to the last farthing.
And, if he does not succeed in getting himself transferred, in the
meanwhile, to the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, he may rest
assured that in the balancing of our accounts no 'T' will remain
uncrossed, no 'I' undotted!
--Adolf Hitler (1889—1945)
German dictator.
[4 July 1942], in _Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944_.

-

-

In 1920, a prominent German lawyer, Karl Binding, and a
distinguished German forensic psychiatrist, Alfred Hoche,
wrote a brief but deadly book, "The Permission To Destroy
Life Unworthy of Life". In his new book, "The Coming of
the Third Reich" (Penguin), Richard Evans notes that
Binding and Hoche emphasized that "the incurably ill and
the mentally retarded were costing millions of marks and
taking up thousands of much-needed hospital beds. So
doctors should be allowed to put them to death."

Then came Adolf Hitler, who thought this was a splendid,
indeed capital, idea.

The October 1, 2003, New York Daily News ran this
Associated Press report from Berlin:

"A new study reveals Nazi Germany killed at least 200,000
people because of their disabilities—people deemed
physically inferior, said a report compiled by Germany's
Federal Archive. Researchers found evidence that doctors
and hospital staff used gas, drugs and starvation to kill
disabled men, women and children at medical facilities
in Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. ...

"The Nazis launched the drive to root out what they called
'worthless lives' [and 'useless eaters'] in the summer of 1939,
pre-dating their full-scale organization of the Holocaust, in
which they killed 6 million Jews."

The more than 200,000 "worthless lives" terminated by
the Nazis before the Holocaust included few Jews. Most
of those killed were other Germans considered unfit to
be included in "the master race."

Among the defendants at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi
leaders and their primary accomplices in the mass murder
were German doctors who had gone along with the official
policy of euthanasia. An American doctor, Leo Alexander,
who spoke German, had interviewed the German physician-
defendants before the trials, and then served as an expert
on the American staff at Nuremberg.

In an article in the July 14, 1949, New England Journal
of Medicine, Dr. Alexander warned that the Nazis' crimes
against humanity had "started from small beginnings ...
merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of
the physicians. It started with the acceptance, basic in the
euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life
not worthy to be lived." [...]

--Nat Hentoff (b. 1925)
American journalist and author.
"It's Not Only About Terri Schiavo" [7 October 2004]

-

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And how will the new republic treat the inferior races? How will it
deal with the black? how will it deal with the yellow man? how will
it tackle that alleged termite in the civilized woodwork, the Jew? [..]
And for the rest, those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white,
and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency?

Well, the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it
they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as
I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop sane,
vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great world of the
future, it is their portion to die out and disappear.

--H.G. Wells (1866—1946)
English novelist.
"Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and
Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought" [1901]


The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there
is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become
the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not
in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an
improvement of the human stock lies.
--H.G. Wells (1866—1946)
English novelist.
"American Journal of Sociology", vol 10, p. 11 [1904].

-

-

The mass killing of mental patients [in Nazi Germany] was a large project.
It was organized as well as any modern community psychiatric project, and
better than most. . . . The organization comprised a whole chain of mental
hospitals and institutions, university professors of psychiatry and directors
and staff members of mental hospitals.
--Fredric Wertham (1895—1981)
German-born American psychiatrist.
(On the murder of 'at least 275,000' individuals identified as
'useless eaters,' 'persons devoid of value,' 'worthless people,'
'superfluous people,' 'misfits,' undesirables,' 'cripples,'
'schizophrenics,' 'idiots,' et al. in more than 30 German
psychiatric facilities with 'special departments' set up
for that purpose, in _A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence_ [1966] - Q)


In 1941 the psychiatric institution, Hadamar, celebrated the cremation
of the ten thousandth mental patient in a special ceremony. Psychiatrists,
nurses, attendants, and secretaries all participated. Everybody received
a bottle of beer for the occasion.
--Fredric Wertham (1895—1981)
German-born American psychiatrist.
_A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence_ [1966] - Q

-




EVIDENCE

.
.

see: "FACTS"
see: "PROOF"
see: "CRIME & PUNISHMENT" for other related links


If you walk on snow you cannot hide your footprints.
--Chinese proverb.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything
on evidence. There's no better rule.
--Charles Dickens (1812—1870)
English novelist.
_Great Expectations_, ch 40 [1861]

A woman scoffs at evidence. Show her the sun,
tell her it is daylight, at once she will close
her eyes and say to you, 'No, it is night.'
--Emile Gaboriau (1832—1873)
French novelist.
_Monsieur Lecoq_ [1869]

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
--David Hume (1711—1776)
Scottish philosopher.
Quoted in T. Cogan _Ethical Questions: Or
Speculations on the Principal Subjects..._, p. 320 [1817].

To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence,
is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet
acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of
guilt.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
_A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_ [1775]

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
as when you find a trout in the milk.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.
_Journal_ [11 November 1850]

-----

irrefragable [ih-REF-ruh-guh-buhl], adjective:
Impossible to refute; incontestable; undeniable; as,
an irrefragable argument; irrefragable evidence.


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