Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
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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.
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so read more
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.
The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of read more
Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.
Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.
Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.
There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind...
There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind...
It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
