The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often read more

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer read more

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There read more

There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the range of those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are fit to observe and describe. There is human action.

Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of read more

Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problem" for society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solved" by the establishment of a new overall adjustment.

Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his read more

Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work- of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence 'unnatural,' but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.

A system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your
neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife.

A system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your
neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife.

Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that read more

Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability- except the order of a dead universe filled with a uniformly distributed gas.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

None save great men have been the authors of great heresies.

None save great men have been the authors of great heresies.