19 Quotes From Famous Historic Figures That Are Sure to Make You Uncomfortable
There are numerous problems with presentism, not the least of which is the sense of moral superiority it breeds.
My friend and colleague Larry Reed has written about the phenomenon known as “presentism,” which involves judging historical figures without considering or even understand the moral or legal framework of their time.
“It’s a fallacious perspective that distorts historical realities by removing them from their context. In sports, we call it ‘Monday morning quarterbacking.’
Presentism is fraught with arrogance. It presumes that present-day attitudes didn’t evolve from earlier ones but popped fully formed from nowhere into our superior heads. To a presentist, our forebears constantly fail to measure up so they must be disdained or expunged. As one writer put it, ‘They feel that their light will shine brighter if they blow out the candles of others.’”
There are numerous problems with presentism, not the least of which is the sense of moral superiority it breeds. The reality is, there’s scarcely a single historical figure one could find who has not uttered something “offensive” or morally dubious to our modern ears. To illustrate my point, I’ve gathered a (sourced) list of quotes from some of the most well-known figures in history.
Some of the figures on this list I hold in very high esteem, others with antipathy.
My point in sharing these quotes is not to illustrate they were evil or flawed individuals. My point is to get readers to consider some of the problems with judging historical figures from our modern pedestal absent historical context.
1. Woodrow Wilson on the rise of the KKK
“The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation — until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”
– Wilson in A History of the American People (1902)
2. Teddy Roosevelt
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” - as quoted in Smithsonian magazine
3. Friedrich Nietzsche
“When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexual organs.” (source)
4. Lyndon Johnson, referencing the Civil Rights Act
“I’ll have those N**gers voting Democratic for 200 years.”
– LBJ, as quoted in Ron Kessler’s 1995 book Inside the White House
5. Margaret Sanger on eugenics and progress
“Some method must be devised to eliminate the degenerate and the defective; for these act constantly to impede progress and ever increasingly drag down the human race.”
– Sanger in the 1923 work A Better Race Through Birth Control
6. Nikola Tesla
“Never trust a Jew!” - As quoted in Tesla: Man Out of Time
7. Ben Franklin on race and immigration
“… the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so… why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red?”
– Franklin in a short 1751 essay titled Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.
8. Abraham Lincoln on race
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” – Lincoln, during his fourth debate with Stephen Douglas
9. Gandhi on Indians procreating with ‘Kaffirs’
“Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.” – Gandhi, 1904, using a derogatory term (kaffir) for South African blacks, a word considered the equivalent of the N word in the U.S.
10. Thomas Edison
“Direct thought is not an attribute of femininity. In this, woman is now centuries behind man.” - (source)
11. Martin Luther King Jr. on domestic abuse
“I would suggest that you analyze the whole situation and see if there is anything within your personality that arouses this tyrannical response from your husband.” — King’s advice for a woman who sought help from an abusive husband
12. H.G. Wells on eugenics
“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 failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.” - Well, 1904
13. Salvador Dali
“Hitler turned me on in the highest.” - (source)
14. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on eugenics
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind….Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
– Holmes Jr., as quoted in Buck v. Bell, 1927
15. Kurt Vonnegut
“Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch: everything stops.”
16. John Maynard Keynes
“The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation.” – Keynes in The End of Laissez-Faire, 1926
17. Winston Churchill on Islam
“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” (source)
18. Aristotle
“The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.” (source)
19. Albert Einstein’s list of demands to his wife
A. You will make sure:
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:
1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.
Presentism is a genuine problem today, and as say, a genuinely arrogant position.
Wow! Jon! Have you read any of DiLorenzo's books on Lincoln?! If not, please do. Start with this:
DiLorenzo and His Critics on the Lincoln Myth Mises.org 04/15/2003 James Ostrowski https://mises.org/library/dilorenzo-and-his-critics-lincoln-myth
“INTRODUCTION
Ken Masugi is partially right about Tom DiLorenzo’s book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (2002). It is "awful"—"awful"ly good, even great. Tom DiLorenzo has completely and irrevocably destroyed the myth, the legend, the fable, the fairy tale--the tall tale of Abraham Lincoln, American’s first military dictator and its first Presidente after the violent regime change of 1861.
THE INDICTMENT
Before discussing the reviews and reaction, let’s review DiLorenzo’s findings. He makes about 71 discrete factual, legal, political, or moral accusations or allegations against or about Lincoln or his subordinates as follows:
1. Saying contradictory things before different audiences.
2. Opposing racial equality.
3. Opposing giving blacks the right to vote, serve on juries or intermarry while allegedly supporting their natural rights.
4. Being a racist.
5. Supporting the legal rights of slaveholders.
6. Supporting Clay’s American System or mercantilism as his primary political agenda: national bank, high tariff, and internal improvements.
7. Supporting a political economy that encourages corruption and inefficiency.
8. Supporting a political economy that became the blueprint for modern American.
9. Being a wealthy railroad lawyer.
10. Never defending a runaway slave.
11. Defending a slaveholder against his runaway slave.
12. Favoring returning ex-slaves to Africa or sending them to Central America and Haiti.
13. Proposing to strengthen the Fugitive Slave law.
14. Opposing the extension of slavery in the territories so that "free white people" can settle there and because allowing them to become slave states would dilute Republican influence in Congress because of the three-fifths rule.
15. Opposing black citizenship in Illinois or their right to immigrate to that state.
16. Failing to use his legendary political skills to achieve peaceful emancipation as was accomplished elsewhere--Lincoln's war was the only "war of emancipation" in the 19th century.
17. Nullifying emancipation of slaves in Missouri and Georgia early in the war.
18. Stating that his primary motive was saving the union and not ending slavery.
19. Supporting a conscription law.
20. Sending troops into New York City to quell draft riots related to his emancipation proclamation, resulting in 300 to 1,000 deaths.
21. Starting a war that took the lives of 620,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians and caused incalculable economic loss.
22. Being an enemy of free market capitalism.
23. Being an economic illiterate and espousing the labor theory of value.
24. Supporting a disastrous public works project in Illinois and continuing to support the same policies oblivious of the consequences.
25. Conjuring up a specious and deceptive argument against the historically-recognized right of state secession.
26. Lying about re-supplying the fed’s tax collection office known as Fort Sumter.
27. Refusing to see peace commissioners from the Confederacy offering to pay for all federal property in the South.
28. Refusing to see Napoleon III of France who offered to mediate the dispute.
29. Provoking Virginia to secede by taking military action against the Deep South.
30. Supporting a tariff and other policies that systematically redistributed wealth from the South to the North, causing great consternation in the South.
31. Invading the South without consulting Congress.
32. Illegally declaring martial law.
33. Illegally blockading ports.
34. Illegally suspending habeas corpus.
35. Illegally imprisoning thousands of Northern citizens.
36. Tolerating their subjection to inhumane conditions in prison.
37. Systematically attacking Northern newspapers and their employees, including by imprisonment.
38. Deporting his chief political enemy in the North, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio.
39. Confiscating private property and firearms.
40. Ignoring the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
41. Tolerating the arrest of ministers who refused to pray for Lincoln.
42. Arresting several duly elected members of the Maryland Legislature along with the mayor of Baltimore and Maryland Congressman Henry May.
43. Placing Kansas and Kentucky under martial law.
44. Supporting a law that indemnified public officials for unlawful acts.
45. Laying the groundwork for the establishment of conscription and income taxation as permanent institutions.
46. Interfering with and rigging elections in Maryland and elsewhere in the North.
47. Censoring all telegraph communication.
48. Preventing opposition newspapers from being delivered by the post office.
49. Illegally creating the state of West Virginia out of the "indestructible" state of Virginia.
50. Tolerating or supporting mistreatment of citizens in conquered territory.
51. Taxing those citizens without their consent.
52. Executing those who refused to take a loyalty oath.
53. Closing churches and arresting ministers.
54. Burning and plundering Southern cites.
55. Quartering troops in private homes unlawfully.
56. Creating an enormous political patronage system.
57. Allowing an unjust mass execution of Sioux Indians in Minnesota.
58. Engineering a constitutional revolution through military force which destroyed state sovereignty and replaced it with rule by the Supreme Court (and the United States Army).
59. Laying the groundwork for the imperialist and militarist campaigns of the future as well as the welfare/warfare state.
60. Creating the dangerous precedent of establishing a strong consolidated state out of a decentralized confederation.
61. Effectively killing secession as a threat, thus encouraging the rise of our modern federal monolith.
62. Waging war on civilians by bombing, destruction of homes, and confiscation of food and farm equipment.
63. Tolerating an atmosphere which led to large numbers of rapes against Southern women, including slaves.
64. Using civilians as hostages.
65. Promoting a general because of his willingness to use his troops as cannon fodder.
66. DiLorenzo blames Lincoln for the predictable aftermath of the war: the plundering of the South by Lincoln’s allies.
67. Supporting government subsidies of the railroads leading to corruption and inefficiency.
68. Supporting a nationalized paper currency which is inherently inflationary.
69. Creating the federal tax bureaucracy and various taxes that are still with us.
70. Establishing precedents for centralized powers and suppression of liberties that continue to be cited today.
71. Ending slavery by means that created turbulence that continues to this day.
THE FIRST DEFENSE—SHOOT THE MESSENGER
Thus, DiLorenzo makes over seventy separate allegations against or about Lincoln or as part of his overall case against Lincoln. (Perhaps I missed a few or possibly there is a little duplication in my list.) What do DiLorenzo's reviewers say about these allegations? Very little. Instead of dealing with these charges, his opponents spent most of their efforts attacking a few citations. The only such alleged error that is anything other than a technicality or difference of opinion concerns Lincoln’s racism.”