Can you identify the author?

[Apollonius]

Here are some excerpts from something I'm reading right now. Can you guess who said those things? You will likely be surprised.
I'm going to add more and more quotes as I get deeper into the book.

Religion is in perpetual conflict with the spirit of free research. The Church's opposition to science was sometimes so violent that it struck off sparks. The Church, with a clear awareness of her interests, has made a strategic retreat, with the result that science has lost some of its aggressiveness.

The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught an hour before—and I remember that I drove them to despair.
The Christian religion tries to get out of it by explaining that one must attach a symbolic value to the images of Holy Writ. Any man who made the same claim four hundred years ago would have ended his career at the stake, with an accompaniment of Hosannas.

Religion draws all the profit that can be drawn from the fact that science postulates the search for, and not the certain knowledge of, the truth. Let's compare science to a ladder.
On every rung, one beholds a wider landscape. But science does not claim to know the essence of things. When science finds that it has to revise one or another notion that it had believed to be definitive, at once religion gloats and declares: "We told you so!" To say that is to forget that it's in the nature of science to behave itself thus. For if it decided to assume a dogmatic air, it would itself become a church.

Does the knowledge brought by science make men happy? That I don't know. But I observe that man can be happy by deluding himself with false knowledge. I grant one must cultivate tolerance.

[Sikon]

Hitler.

[General Zod]

Here are some excerpts from something I'm reading right now. Can you guess who said those things? You will likely be surprised.
I'm going to add more and more quotes as I get deeper into the book.

Who needs to guess? You do know anyone can just copy a chunk from your text, put it into Google and find out who wrote it absurdly easy, right?

[Rye]

It sounds like something you'd find in Hitler's Table Talk, which is attributed to Hitler by hearsay and the editor, but contradicts stuff he wrote and said elsewhere (that is far more corroborated). Apologists often point to the Table Talk stuff as a refutation of Hitler's personal beliefs, or worse, proof that he was an atheist/liberal.

[Ender]

Uncle Adolph

[General Zod]

It sounds like something you'd find in Hitler's Table Talk, which is attributed to Hitler by hearsay and the editor, but contradicts stuff he wrote and said elsewhere (that is far more corroborated). Apologists often point to the Table Talk stuff as a refutation of Hitler's personal beliefs, or worse, proof that he was an atheist/liberal.

Which is pretty hilarious when you take quotes like these into consideration:

The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there's no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they're inspired by the best religious spirit; and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.

[Apollonius]

Who needs to guess? You do know anyone can just copy a chunk from your text, put it into Google and find out who wrote it absurdly easy, right?

Well, sure. But where's the fun in that?

Here's some more tidbits:

As for the Swiss, we can use them, at the best, as hotelkeepers.

But the future belongs, surely, to water - to the wind and the tides. As a means of heating, it's probably hydrogen that will be chosen.

Without doubt, man is the most dangerous microbe imaginable. He exploits the ground beneath his feet without ever asking whether he is disposing thus of products that would perhaps be indispensable to the life of other regions.

I always thought of him as a bloodthirsty madman with a demonic intelligence, but the more I read of this stuff, the more he seems like an ordinary and dull personality. I can't believe any more that he was insane. He seemed to have common sense, average to above average intelligence, and a healthy curiosity about a variety of things. Some of the things he says are pretty insightful, while others seem spectacularly dumb. He doesn't come over as particularly evil, either. I know many people who would have committed the same atrocities if given power to a similar extent. The problem with Hitler, in my view, was not that he was extraordinary evil or insane, but that he was a common uneducated hillbilly.

[Apollonius]

It sounds like something you'd find in Hitler's Table Talk, which is attributed to Hitler by hearsay and the editor, but contradicts stuff he wrote and said elsewhere (that is far more corroborated). Apologists often point to the Table Talk stuff as a refutation of Hitler's personal beliefs, or worse, proof that he was an atheist/liberal.

Which is pretty hilarious when you take quotes like these into consideration:

The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there's no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they're inspired by the best religious spirit; and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.

Or this:

The Russians were entitled to attack their priests, but they had no right to assail the idea of a supreme force. It's a fact that we're feeble creatures, and that a creative force exists. To seek to deny it is folly. In that case, it's better to believe something false than not to believe anything at all.

[General Zod]

I always thought of him as a bloodthirsty madman with a demonic intelligence, but the more I read of this stuff, the more he seems like an ordinary and dull personality. I can't believe any more that he was insane. He seemed to have common sense, average to above average intelligence, and a healthy curiosity about a variety of things. Some of the things he says are pretty insightful, while others seem spectacularly dumb. He doesn't come over as particularly evil, either. I know many people who would have committed the same atrocities if given power to a similar extent. The problem with Hitler, in my view, was not that he was extraordinary evil or insane, but that he was a common uneducated hillbilly.

Your problem is you think people who are otherwise insane aren't capable of being occasionally intelligent or even maintaining a semblance of normalcy, when this is decidedly not the case. The vast majority of the time insanity is not something that turns people into a gibbering Saturday morning cartoon like you seem to be under the impression.

[Apollonius]

Your problem is you think people who are otherwise insane aren't capable of being occasionally intelligent or even maintaining a semblance of normalcy, when this is decidedly not the case. The vast majority of the time insanity is not something that turns people into a gibbering Saturday morning cartoon like you seem to be under the impression.

Please don't make any assumptions about what impression I may or may not be under. Of course I am aware of the fact you so condescendingly described. That doesn't change a thing. He may have had some wacky religious and quasi-religious views, but so do most Christians, Muslims and Jews. That doesn't make him insane. Nor do his occasional fits of temper, his alleged sexual perversions, or his late morphine addiction. You can't even say he was paranoid, since there really were people out to kill him (for good reason).
On what observations do you base your diagnosis of his insanity?
Maybe it is you who is under a wrong impression, namely that bluntness, lack of education, poor language skills, bad taste, short temper, vengefulness, and a coupe of neuroses constitute insanity.

[General Zod]

Please don't make any assumptions about what impression I may or may not be under. Of course I am aware of the fact you so condescendingly described. That doesn't change a thing. He may have had some wacky religious and quasi-religious views, but so do most Christians, Muslims and Jews. That doesn't make him insane. Nor do his occasional fits of temper, his alleged sexual perversions, or his late morphine addiction. You can't even say he was paranoid, since there really were people out to kill him (for good reason).

For starters, I never said any of those things were what necessarily made him insane. Second, the fact that you described him as a bloodthirsty madman and then could not believe he was insane because he seemed ordinary is precisely why you gave off that impression. Perhaps you should learn to phrase things better instead of being so defensive?

On what observations do you base your diagnosis of his insanity?
Maybe it is you who is under a wrong impression, namely that bluntness, lack of education, poor language skills, bad taste, short temper, vengefulness, and a coupe of neuroses constitute insanity.

Again, I never said that is what constituted his insanity. But please feel free to continue projecting your delusions. Finally, Hitler's insanity (megalomania, to be specific) was attributed to his own personal physician. So just maybe you should reconsider the position that he was not, in fact, insane.

[Apollonius]

If you were a bit less condenscending, hostile and outright arrogant, maybe I would have reacted less defensively.
Imagining someone as a madman, and then changing one's mind, should not equal the things you presumed. Perhaps you should stop projecting your own thoughts into other people's posts. Or, even better, perhaps you should refrain from speaking to people you don't know as if they were your inferiors, simply because they disagree with you on trivialities. After all, it's not as if I were advocating Nazi revisionism, creationism or some other outrageous theory. It may be that you simply had a bad day, or it may be that you speak to everyone in that insulting tone, but I subscribed to this board in order to participate in civil conversation, to be corrected or made fun of in a friendly way when I'm wrong, but not to be treated with uncalled for hostility.


There, this thread is yours now, I'm not going to post in it again, we derailed it. Maybe I should have ignored your first post, that would have been wiser. I fell for your provocation and contributed to the escalation. My bad.


P.S.: A physician does not exactly have the capacity to make a psychiatric diagnosis. Especially not someone with such a questionable medical reputation as Dr. Morell.

[General Zod]

If you were a bit less condenscending, hostile and outright arrogant, maybe I would have reacted less defensively.
Imagining someone as a madman, and then changing one's mind, should not equal the things you presumed. Perhaps you should stop projecting your own thoughts into other people's posts. Or, even better, perhaps you should refrain from speaking to people you don't know as if they were your inferiors, simply because they disagree with you on trivialities. After all, it's not as if I were advocating Nazi revisionism, creationism or some other outrageous theory. It may be that you simply had a bad day, or it may be that you speak to everyone in that insulting tone, but I subscribed to this board in order to participate in civil conversation, to be corrected or made fun of in a friendly way when I'm wrong, but not to be treated with uncalled for hostility.

You apparently haven't read the board's headline of mocking stupid people. Either that or you're just a troll who insists on a net-nanny environment; if you can't deal with it then you can kindly fuck off for all I care.

P.S.: A physician does not exactly have the capacity to make a psychiatric diagnosis. Especially not someone with such a questionable medical reputation as Dr. Morell.

Regardless if it was his personal physician or not, I'd question the sanity of anyone condoning the genocide of an entire race. Which Hitler did, in fact, do.

[Kanastrous]

Hitler's clean break with reality in 1944-45 underwrites a crazy diagnosis, for me.

Insisting on issuing attack orders to units no longer extant, pitching screaming fits over children and old men failing to repel battle-hardened shock troops supported by armor and artillery, and advocating the wholesale destruction of your own people (as payback for failing to win the ill-conceived war you led them into) don't look like the behavior of a particularly sane person, to me.

[Sea Skimmer]

Hitler may have gone crazy by 1944-45, but earlier on he was a lot better connected with reality and less delusional then I think people make him out to be. He knew full well that his wars were long shots, but it was his belief that if they could not be won, then it did not matter because the alterative was Germany would be blocked into a position of gross inferiority for the rest of history.

He had to attack Poland in 1939 because his economic plans had failed, and yet the allies had not yet rearmed, waiting would mean giving up any hope of victory. Likewise by 1941, it was a matter of either attacking Russia, or waiting for Stalin to attack first. Declaring war on the US was perfectly logical, because the US was already fully supporting the UK, and rearming its own forces and was bound to get involved anyway.

The genocide of the jews is a harder nut, while Hitler made speeches calling for the destruction of the Jewish race well before the war, he also tended to specify that this would only happen if the Jews caused another world war (aka, the allies decide to defend whoever he attacks). It’s not really clear when he became intent to actually carry out this plan. The appeasement practiced by the British and French couldn’t have helped his thinking much. One must also remember that he was hardly the only violent anti Semite around, after all one doesn’t make speeches like that to an unreceptive audience.