There is perhaps no better way of measuring the natural endowment of a soul than by its ability to transmute dissatisfaction into a creative impulse. The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
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The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither read more
The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
The man whose authority is recent is always stern.
The man whose authority is recent is always stern.
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in read more
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the read more
Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.The read more
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
Socialism is Bolshevism with a shave.
Socialism is Bolshevism with a shave.
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level read more
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.
