A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring upon them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves- and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.
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Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation read more
Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication is the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, "it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.".
Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.
Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.
Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating read more
Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the read more
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
I believe the best social program is a job.
I believe the best social program is a job.
The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.
Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.
Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.
