Mind: quotes, facts and reflections - Page 9

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Q2120

StillnessPhilosophy

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

The version usually posted — 'the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves' — is not Russell's. It is a paraphrase, repeated by Charles Bukowski in a 1989 interview and credited back to Russell ever since. Russell's actual sentence was written in May 1933, a few weeks after Hitler took power, in an essay about why the confident were winning the argument in Germany.

Bertrand Russell, 'The Triumph of Stupidity' (1933)Read card

Q2122

StillnessLiterature

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

The fox says it as a parting gift, after teaching the prince that the time he wasted on his rose is exactly what makes the rose his. Saint-Exupéry wrote the book in New York, in exile, grounded and miserable, and drew the watercolours himself. In July 1944 he flew a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean and did not return. His silver identity bracelet was pulled from the sea in 1998; the wreck was identified in 2004.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943)Read card

Q2123

DriveHistory

In 1090 Hassan-i Sabbah took the mountain fortress of Alamut without a battle — Persian chronicles say he handed its owner a draft for 3,000 gold dinars.

Alamut stands on a rock ridge in the Elburz mountains of northern Persia, approachable by one narrow path. Hassan had spent years quietly winning over the people of the surrounding valleys before he ever addressed the castle itself, so by the time he arrived the garrison was already half his. A state that would outlast him by well over a century began as a property transaction. Patience had already done the work a siege could not.

Alamut, 1090Read card

Q2129

WonderHistory

Marco Polo described a hidden garden where recruits woke believing they were in paradise — a tale already circulating in Europe, about a fortress that had fallen before he travelled.

The details are wonderful and that is the problem: gilded pavilions, a sleeping draught, young men waking in an engineered heaven. But the title 'Old Man of the Mountain' was invented by Crusaders for the Syrian Ismaili leader and never used in Iran, Alamut had been destroyed before Polo passed through, and the story was current in Europe before he wrote it down. He was repeating what Europeans already believed. The most famous fact about the Assassins is really a fact about their audience.

Marco PoloRead card

Q2132

StillnessHistory

In 1256 Hulagu Khan's army surrounded Alamut, and its last ruler, Rukn al-Din Khurshah, surrendered the fortress rather than defend it.

For a century and a half the fortress had been the answer to every siege — the cisterns, the terraces, the single approach. Then the Mongols arrived, and the thing that ended it was not a wall coming down but a decision. Khurshah came out, the fortifications were dismantled, the library was burned, and the Nizari state was over as a political fact. The defences had been built for the war everyone expected. They were never the part that failed.

Siege of Alamut, 1256Read card