Conservatism is sometimes a symptom of sterility. Those who have nothing in them that can grow and develop must cling to what they have in beliefs, ideas and possessions. The sterile radical, too, is basically conservative. He is afraid to let go of the ideas and beliefs he picked up in his youth lest his life be seen as empty and wasted.
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Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him read more
Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
Almost everyone who has read history in a more than casual manner knows that when the great figure of God read more
Almost everyone who has read history in a more than casual manner knows that when the great figure of God appears in a controversy, the shooting cannot be far off.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting
values, we must recognize the whole gamut of read more
If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting
values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human
potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one
in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, read more
Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can read more
Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral.
Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into read more
Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.
The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human read more
The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims.
The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called
the savior of society by the next.
The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called
the savior of society by the next.
