What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored.
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Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the read more
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
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.
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.
I think I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
I think I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
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.
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.
Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.
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.
Those families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten
thousand.
Those families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten
thousand.
Rejoicing not in the many but in the probity of the few, we toil for truth alone.
Rejoicing not in the many but in the probity of the few, we toil for truth alone.
