Refusing to Worship the Hydra’s Heads – J.R.R. Tolkien
Source: Letters
What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in… It is our duty to keep the Flag of the World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. …It is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we could to repair them; but the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and so many headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than to personally refuse to worship any of the hydra’s heads.
‘What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in… It is our duty to keep the Flag of the World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. …It is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we could to repair them; but the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and so many headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than to personally refuse to worship any of the hydra’s heads.’