Comments on: Religion is a kind of vaccination

By: T. Beholder

T. Beholder — Tue, 13 May 2025 03:37:07 +0000

The priests are better than the Cagliostros, the Kants, and all the visionaries of Germany.

In the modern terms, a placeholder. Much like British “monarchy”, but also useful as a ready fallback. Likewise, you don’t think Moscow is full of devoted Orthodox people, do you? It’s just something by and large decent (really ugly incidents are >30 years old). And as Russian proverb says, a holy place never sits empty.

the famous misattributed G.K. Chesterton quote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Misattributed

Indeed. For future reference, Quote Investigator as usual gets a deeper look than plain search and the nearest similar quote. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/09/10/believe-anything/

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 10 May 2025 19:56:25 +0000

Bonaparte really dissed Kant? Incredible….

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Fri, 09 May 2025 20:33:38 +0000

And if anyone’s wondering, Hayao Miyazaki's (feature) directorial debut, The Castle of Cagliostro, has roughly nothing to do with the quack of quacks.

By: McChuck

McChuck — Fri, 09 May 2025 09:18:03 +0000

“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.” — The Philosopher’s Song, M. Python

By: Handle

Handle — Thu, 08 May 2025 22:17:02 +0000

Cagliostro was Carlyle’s “Quack of Quacks”.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 08 May 2025 19:54:42 +0000

Lior Lefineder (@lefineder) found a source:

Reported by Joseph Pelet de la Lozère, an administrator who served under Napoleon in his book: "Napoleon in Council, The Opinions Delivered by Bonaparte in the Council of State"

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 08 May 2025 19:29:46 +0000

The smallpox vaccine was introduced to France in 1800, and Napoleon strongly endorsed it, so it seems plausible that he would refer to it.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 08 May 2025 19:17:13 +0000

I was delighted to see the quote footnoted — but it was not a citation, just an explanatory note:

Joseph Balsamo, aka Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743–95), had been a famous occultist and fraud, unmasked during his lifetime, so it was strange for Napoleon to dismiss the great rationalist and one of the founders of German idealism, Immanuel Kant, alongside such a notorious mountebank.

By: Alex S.

Alex S. — Thu, 08 May 2025 17:40:14 +0000

Interesting that the word vaccine appears to be very recent at that time. If Napoleon really used used it. Does the book in its notes have the original French?