The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. In times of crises these men need the guidance of some kind of theory; but, being unfamiliar with the field of ideas, they do not know that alternatives to the popular theories are possible. They know only what they have always been taught.
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Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.
Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.
The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a read more
The first step in freeing yourself from social restrictions is the realization that there is no such thing as a "safe" code of conduct - one that would earn everyone's approval. Your actions can always be condemned by someone - for being too bold or too apathetic, for being too conformist or too nonconformist, for being too liberal or too conservative. So it's necessary to decide whose approval is important to you.
A man is but what he knows.
A man is but what he knows.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to read more
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything in to an empty head.
Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person's mind- rather the contrary; but wherever they read more
Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person's mind- rather the contrary; but wherever they do liberate an individual's judgement and confidence we can be sure that we are in the presence of exceptional ability.
A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by good manners, is an excellent thing; but to "hunger and read more
A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by good manners, is an excellent thing; but to "hunger and thirst" after it is often merely a symptom of spiritual diabetes.
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it read more
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run, these are the only people who count.
It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own read more
It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.
We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. - The read more
We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. - The Heart's Domain.
