Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do.
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We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us read more
We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate.
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man read more
There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is read more
He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
Truth...never comes into the world but like a Bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.
Truth...never comes into the world but like a Bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that read more
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
Every intense desire is perhaps a desire to be different from what we are.
We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
Sometimes the subconscious mind manifests a wisdom several steps or even years ahead of the conscious mind, and has its read more
Sometimes the subconscious mind manifests a wisdom several steps or even years ahead of the conscious mind, and has its own way of leading us toward our destiny.
