The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
You May Also Like / View all maxioms
Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his read more
The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.
A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly read more
A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.
Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true read more
Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands read more
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild harmless, rather read more
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.
No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.
No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice read more
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense which cramps and restrains our nature.
The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
