💬 Quotes

"At present I prefer not to be a little reasonable: it is not yet time."

"Strangely moping and grieving, and at the same time knowing, and seemingly feeling, that no peculiar distress is mine."

"Social cohesion is a necessity, but so is individual initiative. If civilization is to progress, it is necessary that individual men and women should have scope for creative impulses, and that these impulses should not be stifled by an over-organized society."

"The growth of vast industrial enterprises and the increasing complexity of the modern state have necessarily diminished the part which the individual can play in determining his own destiny."

"Cohesion is of two sorts: one spontaneous and unthinking, the other deliberate and state-enforced. In a complex society, spontaneous cohesion is impossible, and therefore reliance must be placed upon government."

"Work and government are the two chief sources of fear and hope in modern life. If men are to be happy, they must not only feel secure, but they must feel that their work is worthwhile and that they have some say in how it is directed."

"It is characteristic of a healthy society that it should be capable of combining a high degree of organization with a high degree of individual freedom, but this is an extremely difficult achievement."

"The impulses of the prophet and the artist are dangerous to established institutions, yet without them, societies stagnate and eventually decay. Wisdom consists in finding a framework within which these rare impulses can be tolerated and even encouraged."

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one 'object' of love."

"Hatred is a madness of the heart."

"In the marketing orientation man experiences himself as a commodity on the market, his value not as use value, but as exchange value."

"Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites. The selfish person does not love himself too much, but too little; in fact he hates himself."

"If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all."

"Reason is man's instrument for comprehending the world, for finding his way through it, whereas faith is man's instrument for an ultimate relatedness to another human being and to himself."

"The investigation of truth is the grand object of our intellectual existence; and the pursuit of it is calculated to elevate and purify the mind."

"Attention is to the mind what the microscope is to the eye; it magnifies and reveals objects which would otherwise escape our notice."

"In the moral as in the physical world, the most important truths are often the most simple, and lie nearest to our view, if we have but the candor to perceive them."

"Hypothesis should be regarded merely as a scaffolding for the erection of a building, to be removed as soon as the structure is completed."

"Memory depends, in a great measure, upon the intensity with which the original impression was made, and the degree of attention which was given to it at the time."