In any cause, the best or the most atrocious, zeal is always intoxicating. A world without zeal would be a world deprived of many simple but savage pleasures: but at least half its present excuses for interfering and bullying would have been taken away from it.
Aldous Huxley, Introduction to The Easton Press edition of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1934), signed July 24, 1933.
These lines follow a much-quoted but mis-cited passage first published here 11 days ago. This quotation, above, completes the paragraph that I have published in these pages (on memevigilante.com) as a corrective to the usually mis-cited “quote.”
The title, above, references an excellent piece of music by contemporary composer John Adams.
twv
Wirkman Comment 