When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.
You May Also Like / View all maxioms
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death
Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death
To gauge the understanding and insight that metaphysics provides is to ask whether, in the final analysis, it helps us read more
To gauge the understanding and insight that metaphysics provides is to ask whether, in the final analysis, it helps us to cope with our world and harmonize our existence with nature, humanity, and ourselves, and leads to greater freedom and self-realization. Metaphysics is only the beginning. The end is human progress.
...far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to read more
...far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, read more
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which read more
We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.
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.
There arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind.
There arises from a bad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind.
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual"- find out how he feels about astrology.
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual"- find out how he feels about astrology.
We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something read more
We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.
