Genius is often insightfully succinct — 4 representative aphorisms from Lord Acton

© 2016 Peter Free

 

11 August 2016

 

 

Penetrating minds are a wisdom-hunter's delight

 

Consider these aphorisms from Lord Acton — of "absolute power corrupts absolutely" fame — here lifted from Wikipedia:

 

 

Great men are almost always bad men.[4]

 

 

There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.[17]

 

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.[22]

 

 

Universal History is ... not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.[16]

 

 

Do you think that Lord Acton recognized —

 

. . . the breadth and depth of the assumptions that he was making about Reality?

 

Perhaps not.

 

Cogence has to abandon complexity, as well as modifiers, to become memorably guiding. At the same time, memorable brevity usually must hint at underlying complexity in order to be accurate.

 

 

The moral? — Succinctly expressed insights only begin our exploration

 

The more obvious an aphorism's subtle complexity, the more likely its beneficent worth.

 

Most people do not recognize this paradox. Which accounts for the trouble that Humanity gets into, when dragging pithy signposts from History's past and present caves.