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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Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One read more
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.
Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, read more
Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, and indifferent. But a rational life, the life of a valuer, does not consist essentially in reaction. It consists in action. Man does not find his values, like the other animals; he creates them. The primary focus of a valuer is not to take the world as it comes and pass judgment. His primary focus is to identify what might and ought to exist, to uncover potentialities that he can exploit, to find ways of reshaping the world in the image of his values.
Considering the enormous range of human knowledge, from intimate personal knowledge of specific individuals to the complexities of organizations and read more
Considering the enormous range of human knowledge, from intimate personal knowledge of specific individuals to the complexities of organizations and the subtleties of feelings, it is remarkable that one speck in this firmament should be the sole determinant of whether someone is considered knowledgeable or ignorant in general. Yet it is a fact of life that an unlettered person is considered ignorant, however much he may know about nature and man, and a Ph.D. is never considered ignorant, however barren his mind might be outside his narrow specialty and however little he grasps about human feeling or social complexities.
Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live read more
Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live with the natural psychological laws that govern us, understanding how to flow with life rather than struggle against it. We can return to our natural state of contentment.
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the read more
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they read more
We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of read more
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man read more
The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors.
