20291870 thinkers collection

8/8/2019 20291870 Thinkers Collection

1/16


2/16

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is adescending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks todestroy. Through violence you may murder the hater,

but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merelyincreases hate.

Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?"Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" Vanityasks the question, "Is it popular?" Conscience asksthe question "Is it right?" And there comes a timewhen one must take a position that is neither safe,nor politic, nor popular, but because it is right.

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say "We aren't going to study war any more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

The strong one holds in a living blend stronglymarked opposites. The idealists are usually notrealistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic.The militant are not generally known to be passive,nor the passive to be militant. But life at its best is acreative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.

Jesus re cognized the need for ble nding oppos ites. Hegave th em a formula for action, " Be ye theref ore aswise as serpents, and harmless as doves." We mustcombine the toughness of the serpent with thesoftness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness, thekind that Jesus placed on a dangerous curve betweenJerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certainman, who fell among thieves. You remember that aLevite and a priest passed by on the other side. Theydidn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decidednot to be compassionate by proxy, but with him, headministered first aid, and helped the man in need.

Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.

Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.

All men are equal; it is not their birth, but virtue itself thatmakes the difference.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.

Almost everything is imitation. The idea of The PersianLetters was taken from The Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitatedPulci. Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original writers

borrowed from one another.

Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

Use, do not abuse; the wise man arrange things so. I fleeEpictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, theillustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, whofirst took the knife from the altar to make victims of thosewho refused to be their disciples?

It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemnan innocent one.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where establishedmen are wrong.

A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does whenthe helm of government has forced his hand in a storm;

but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

HOME

In Their Own Words 2

PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairehttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_1_Article.htmlhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltairehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.


3/16

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelousuniverse, this tremendous range of time and spaceand different animals, and all the planets, and allthese atoms with all their motions, and so on, all thiscomplicated thing can merely be a stage so that Godcan watch humans struggle for good and evil which is religions view. The stage is too big for thedrama.

You can know the name of a bird in all the languagesof the world, but you'll know absolutely nothingwhatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird andsee what it's doing that's what counts. I learnedvery early the difference between knowing the nameof something and knowing something.

When playing Russian roulette the fact that the firstshot got off safely is little comfort for the next.

A poet once said "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense hemeant that, for poets do not write to be understood.But it is true that if we look at a glass closely enoughwe see the entire universe. There are the things of

physics: the twisting liquid which evaporatesdepending on the wind and weath er, the refle ctions inthe glass, and our imaginations ad ds the atom s. Theglass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in itscomposition we see the secret of the universe's age,and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are there in the wine? How did they cometo be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, thesubstrates, and the products. There in wine is foundthe great generalization: all life is fermentation.

Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine withoutdiscovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of muchdisease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existenceinto the consciousness that watches it! If our smallminds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts physics, biology,geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on remember that Nature does not know it! Let it giveus one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

But tell me, this physician of whom you were justspeaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or ahealer of the sick?

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay moreand the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Humans censure injustice fearing that they may be thevictims of it, and not because they shrink from committingit.

Until the wise are presidents, or the presidents and leadersof this world have the spirit and power of wisdom, and

political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and thosecommoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and povertyof meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.Democracy, which is a charming form of government, fullof variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equalityto equals and unequaled alike, sooner or later passes intodespotism.

You cannot conceive the many without the one. Youcannot conceive the one without the many.

The good are not willing to govern either for money or for fame. They do not wish to be paid for their service and bestyled hirelings nor to take it by stealth and be calledthieves, nor even for the sake of fame, for they do notcovet fame. When the better sort go into it, they do so notin the expectation of enjoyment nor as to a good thing, butas a necessary evil and because they are unable to turn itover to better than themselves or to their like. For we maysay that, if there should ever be a city of the good,immunity from office-holding would be as eagerlycontended for as office is now.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platohttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


4/16

Let us think of education as the means of developingour greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a

private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can betranslated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.

Liberty without learning is always in peril; learningwithout liberty is always in vain.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may besolved by man. No problem of human destiny is

beyond human beings

The American, by nature, is optimistic. He isexperimental, an inventor and a builder who builds

best when called upon to build greatly.

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was thefull use of your powers along lines of excellence.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth. Theopportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life insuch a universe is time well spent.

In sho rt, we must face problems w hich do n ot lendthemse lves to easy or quick or pe rmanent so lutions.And we must face the fact that the United States isneither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are onlysix percent of the world's population, that we cannotimpose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverseeach adversity, and that therefore there cannot be anAmerican solution to every world problem.

Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history ithas been used by those who could not prevail, either

by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail,either because men are not afraid to die for a lifeworth living, or because the terrorists themselvescame to realize that free men cannot be frightened bythreats, and that aggression would meet its ownresponse.

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking,'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interestinghole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? Infact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made tohave me in it!'

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the skyand the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle getssmaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to thenotion that everything is going to be alright, because thisworld was meant to have him in it, was built to have himin it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather bysurprise. I think this may be something we need to be onthe watch out for.

The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity andrichness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. Imean the idea that such complexity can arise not only outof such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing,is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you getsome kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it's

just wonderful. And . . . the opportunity to spend 70 or 80years of your life in such a universe is time well spent asfar as I am concerned.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,on the surface of a gas covered planet going around anuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to benormal is obviously some indication of how skewed our

perspective tends to be.

Generally, old media don't die. They just have to grow oldgracefully. Guess what, we still have stone masons. Theyhaven't been the primary purveyors of the written word for a while now of course, but they still have a role becauseyou wouldn't want a TV screen on your headstone.

My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact thatyoung sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adamshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adamshttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_3_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adamshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedyhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


5/16


6/16

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensibleinto the indifferent by the incompetent.

The difficulty lies, not in new ideas, but in escapingfrom old ones.

By a continuing process of inflation, governmentsconfiscate, secretly and unobserved, the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not onlyconfiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, whilethe process impoverishes many, it actually enrichessome. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidencein the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the wickedestof men will do the wickedest of things for thegreatest good of everyone.

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuitthat still carries any reward.

When t he accumulation of wealth is no longe r of high so cial importance, there will be great ch anges inthe code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselvesof many of the pseudo-moral principles which haveridden us for two hundred years, by which we haveexalted some of the most distasteful of humanqualities into the position of the highest virtues.

The love of money as a possession will berecognized for what it is, a somewhat disgustingmorbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-

pathological propensities which one hands over witha shudder to specialists in mental disease ... But

beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at leastanother hundred years we must pretend to ourselvesand to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and

precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues becausewithout courage you can't practice any other virtueconsistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, butnothing consistently without courage.

People will forget what you said. People will forget whatyou did. But people will never forget how you made themfeel.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorestexistence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings

become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scaleof responsibility at a commensurate speed.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts.Facts can obscure the truth.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not bedefeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter thedefeats, so you can know who you are, what you can risefrom, how you can still come out of it.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make usthink we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone ingroups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity.We use it. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep aheart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocutea person with it.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannotinfluence neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish it is an imponderably valuable gift.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keyneshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelouhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keyneshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelouhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_5_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelouhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keyneshttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


7/16

The surface of American society is covered with alayer of democratic paint, but from time to time onecan see the aristocratic colors breaking through.

What is the most important for democracy is not thatgreat fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunesshould not remain in the same hands. In that waythere are rich men, but they do not form a class.

In the United States, the majority undertakes tosupply a multitude of ready-made opinions for theuse of individuals, who are thus relieved from thenecessity of forming opinions of their own.

I know of no country in which there is as littleindependence of mind and discussion as in America.

As one digs deeper into the national character of theAmericans, one sees that they have sought the valueof everything in this world only in the answer to thissingle question: how much money will it bring in?

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

Step b ack in time; look at the chil d in arm s of hismothe r; see the external world refl ected for the firsttime in the yet unclear mirror of h is unders tanding;study the first examples which strike his eyes; listento the first words which arouse the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has toundergo; only then will you comprehend the sourceof his prejudices, the habits, and the passions whichare to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak,comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.

The American Republic will endure, until politiciansrealize they can bribe the people with their ownmoney.

The greatness of America lies not in being moreenlightened than other nations, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering;the capacity for self-indulgence changes hands.

My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives usmany useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets.Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

Its not the voting thats democracy, its the counting.

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify capriciously their urge for immortality. The temples are

built and brought down around him, continuously andcontiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If thereis any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art,yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in thecelebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust.

A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchantslooking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken

pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes,of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched athousand ships and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer,the most human, the most complete of all heroes husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist,

politician, inventor and adventurer.

Buddy Holly was twenty-two. Think of what he mighthave gone on to achieve. I mean, if Beethoven had beenkilled in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of musicwould have been very different. As would the history of aviation.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. Theydeserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order,you might nudge the world a little or make a poem thatchildren will speak for you when you are dead.

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocquevillehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stoppardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocquevillehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stoppardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocquevillehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stoppardhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_6_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Stoppardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocquevillehttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


8/16

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts hisfeats in it.

A business absolutely devoted to service will haveonly one worry about profits. They will beembarrassingly large.

A market is never saturated with a good product, butit is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

It is not the employer who pays the wages.Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them.If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, themoney brings that out, that's all.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money o ut of the manipulation of prices, inst ead of supplyin g goods and services.

The man who will use his skill and constructiveimagination to see how much he can give for adollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar,is bound to succeed.

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is:Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowestcost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

You will find men who want to be carried on theshoulders of others, who think that the world owesthem a living. They don't seem to see that we must alllift together and pull together.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices thatspeak with equal force in the heart of man: one veryreasonably tells the man to consider the nature of thedanger and the means of avoiding it; the other even morereasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events;and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painfulsubject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. Insolitude a man generally yields to the first voice; insociety to the second.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappyfamily is unhappy in its own way.

Nor is it given to any man to know whether, when eveningcomes, he will need boots for his body or slippers for hiscorpse.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the mostslow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of themalready; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to themost intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that heknows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid

before him.

I know that most men not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or

philosophic, problems can seldom discern even thesimplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obligesthem to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed,

perhaps with much difficulty conclusions of which theyare proud, which they have taught to others, and on whichthey have built their lives.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by thegovernments, the governments alone, independent of theinterests of the people, to whom war is always perniciouseven when successful.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fordhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fordhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_7_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fordhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


9/16

Great problems call for many small solutions.

Whether we know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, the people whoshare the place define and limit the each other's lives.It is the knowledge that people have of each other,their concern for each other, their trust in each other,the freedom with which they come and go amongthemselves.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve asclassrooms and laboratories where techniques andstates of mind are prepared for the next war.

We haven't accepted, we can't really believe, that themost characteristic product of our age of scientificmiracles is junk, but it is so. We still think and

behave as though we face an unspoiled continent,with thousands of acres of living space for every one.We still sing 'America the Beautiful' as though wehad not created in it, by strenuous effort, at g reatexpens e, and with dauntless self- praise, anunprec edented ugliness.

Individualism is going around these days in uniform,handing out the party line on individualism.

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is alearner. A teacher's major contribution may pop outanonymously in the life of some ex-student'sgrandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on

but faith, a student nothing to offer in return buttestimony.

The most alarming sign of the state of our societynow is that our leaders have the courage to sacrificethe lives of young people in war, but have not thecourage to tell us that we must be less greedy andless wasteful.

When we look through telescopes and microscopes, or when we look at nature, we have a problem. Somehow theidea of God from the scriptures doesn't seem to fit theworld around us, just as you wouldn't ascribe acomposition by Stravinsky to Bach.

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. It's hard to conceive of the author of one as the author of the other.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe.They take their principles by inheritance, and defend themas they would their estates, because they are born heirs tothem.

You see, many of the troubles going on in the world rightnow are being supervised by people with very goodintentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, toclean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. Themore we try to put everything to rights, the more we makefantastic messes. Maybe I should not say anything at allabout the folly of trying to put things to right but simply,on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly sothat he will become wise.

There is a place for awe and astonishment at existence.That is also a basis for respect for existence. We donthave much of it in this culture though we call itmaterialistic. Today we are bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gases.This is a materialist culture that has no respect for material.

I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposingsevere penalties on anyone who burns the American flag,whereas they are responsible for burning that for which theflag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people,and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Wattshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Wattshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berryhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_8_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Wattshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berryhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


10/16

One cannot be deeply responsive to the worldwithout being saddened very often.

The claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot bea realistic political claim. If all nations wouldsuddenly claim territories in which their forefathershad lived two thousand years ago, this world would

be a madhouse. I believe that, politically speaking,there is only one solution for Israel, namely, theunilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of theState towards the Arabs, not to use it as a bargaining

point, but to acknowledge the complete moralobligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitantsof Palestine.

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the personin an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

Care and responsibility are elements of love, butwithout respect for and knowledge of the beloved,love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.

Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, butthey are not capable of loving the mselves eith er.

National ism is our form of incest, is our idola try, isour insanity. "Patriotism is its cult. It should hardly

be necessary to say, that by "patriotism I mean thatattitude which puts the own nation above humanity,above the principles of truth and justice; not theloving interest in ones own nation, which is theconcern with the nations spiritual as much as withits material welfare never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual whichexcludes the love for others is not love, love for onescountry which is not part of ones love for humanityis not love, but idolatrous worship.

Reason is our instrument for arriving at the truth,intelligence our instrument for manipulating theworld successfully; the former is essentially human,the latter is the animal part.

A poem should be palpable and muteAs a globed fruit

DumbAs old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stoneOf casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordlessAs the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releasesTwig by twig the night-entangled trees,Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to: Not true

For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For loveThe leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not meanBut be.

The Pyrrhonist thinks that life should not mean but be.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Frommhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_MacLeishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Frommhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_MacLeishhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_9_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Frommhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_MacLeishhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


11/16

Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to sweep away all theories andcommon notions, and to apply the understanding,thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of

particulars.

If one begin with certainties, one shall end in doubts; but if one will be content to begin with doubts oneshall end in certainties.

Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other thingseither will come, or will not be wanted.

Being the servant and interpreter of Nature, one cando and understand so much and so much only asobserved in fact or in thought of the course of nature.Beyond this one neither knows anything nor can doanything.

The human understanding is of its own nature proneto suppose the existence of more order and regularityin the world than it finds.

Human u nderstanding is like a fal se mirror, w hich,receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discol ors thenature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge:for some have entered into a desire of learning andknowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity andinquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enablethem to victory of wit and contradiction; and mosttimes for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerelyto give a true account of their gift of reason, to the

benefit and use of others.

Prosperity best discovers vice, but adversity bestdiscovers virtue.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothingis superfluous.

The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it iswith time present.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their ownopinions.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

Experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. If you produce a smallquantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sunfall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smokea piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine,you will see that all the smoke which is between the eyeand the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue color.And if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke,that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke doesnot produce, the perfection of this blue color. Hence amoderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue.

We see the most striking example of humility in the lambwhich will submit to any animal; and when they are givenfor food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them asto their own mother, so that very often it has been seenthat the lions forbear to kill them.

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetryis a painting which is heard but not seen.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Baconhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vincihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Baconhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vincihttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_10_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vincihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Baconhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


12/16

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose public records to be true.

That the Jews assumed a right exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness againstthem. The same will it be against Christians.

When nations grow old, the arts grow cold, andcommerce settles on every tree.

Active evil is better than passive good.

Those who never alter their opinions are likestanding water, and breed reptiles of the mind.

The fool sees not the same tree that the wise see.

No bird soars too high, if it soars with its own wings.

If a fool persists in folly, the fool will become wise.

The cistern contains. The fountain overflows.

You neve r know what is enough u nless you knowwhat is m ore than enough.

Those who bind to themselves a joy do the wingdlife destroy; those who kiss the joy as it flies by, livein eternal sunrise.

Those who would do good to others must do it inminute particulars; general good is the plea of thescoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer.

Both of us read the scriptures day and night, but youread black where I read white.

A robin redbreast in a cage puts the skies into a rage.

To be ignorant of the past is to forever be a child.

We are not born for ourselves alone.

One is never less at leisure than when at leisure.

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

Genius is fostered by energy.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parentof all others.

While there's life, there's hope.

The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.

We denounce with indignation and dislike those who areso beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasures of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foreseethe the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal

blame belongs to those who fail in their duty throughweakness of will, which is the same as saying throughshrinking from toil and pain.

These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish.

In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeledand when nothing prevents our being able to do what welike best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every painavoided.

But in other times and owing to the claims of duty or obligation it will frequently occur that pleasures have to berepudiated and annoyances accepted.

The wise therefore always hold in these matters to this principle of selection: to reject pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else to endure pains to avoid worse

pains.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blakehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicerohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blakehttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_11_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicerohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blakehttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


13/16

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs thattrade is brisk and money plenty.

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow thatthe savage has, because we know how it is made. Wehave lost as much as we gained by prying into thatmatter.

You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a catdoes -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let acat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed,nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you thelockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise whichfighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain'tso; it's the sickening grammar they use.

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose youwere a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Loyalty to petrified opinions neve r yet broke a chainor freed a human soul in this wor ld and ne ver will.

To create man was a fine and original idea; but toadd the sheep was a tautology.

The only reason why God created man is because hewas disappointed with the monkey.

It is curious that physical courage should be socommon in the world, and moral courage so rare.

I have been complimented many times and theyalways embarrass me; I always feel that they have notsaid enough.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect my own.

Old women snore violently. They are like bodies intowhich bizarre animals have crept at night; the animals arevicious, bawdy, noisy. How they snore! There is no shameto their snoring. Old women turn into old men.

It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being,so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, tomake his claim.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing,

because you have that space.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing usfrom superficiality.

When poets write about food it is usually celebratory.Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful

preparation of meals, the serving of meals, mealscommunally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane.

Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, thevoice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive,teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spiders delicate web, akind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.

When youre 50 you start thinking about things youhavent thought about before. I used to think getting oldwas about vanity, but actually its about losing people youlove. Getting wrinkles is trivial.

It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing toacknowledge, but we do love our students.

There is the expectation that a younger generation has theopportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twainhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oateshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twainhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oateshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twainhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_12_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oateshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twainhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


14/16

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why dontthey try to understand bird song? Why do they love anight, a flower, everything which surrounds man,without attempting to understand them?

Where painting is concerned, they want to understand.Let them understand above all that the artist worksfrom necessity; that he is a minute element of theworld to whom one should ascribe no moreimportance than so many things in nature whichcharm us but which we do not explain to ourselves.

Those who attempt to explain a picture are on thewrong track most of the time. Gertrude Stein told mesome time ago that she had finally understood whatmy picture represented: three musicians. It was a still-life!!

Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensiveweapon in the defense against the enemy.

For a long time I limited myself to one color as aform of discipline.

It is not what the artist does that c ounts. But w hat heis. Cezan ne would never have int erested me if he hadlived and thought like Jaques-Em ile Blanche, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more

beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Czanne,the teaching of Czanne, the anguish of Van Gogh, inshort the inner drama of the man. The rest is false.

Abstract art is only painting. And whats so dramaticabout that? There is no abstract art. One must always

begin with something. Afterwards one can remove allsemblance of reality; there is no longer any danger asthe idea of the object has left an indelible imprint.

It is what aroused the artist, stimulated his ideas andset of his emotions. These ideas and emotions will beimprisoned in his work for good.. ..Whether he wantsit or not, man is the instrument of nature; she imposeson him character and appearance.

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, theycease to be men, and become merely machines for eatingand for earning money.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York buttoward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry ashugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot tolearn, but had been given the liberating notion that now Icould teach myself.

In asking forgiveness of women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being unreal about them, we can onlyappeal to their own sexuality, which is different but not

basically different, perhaps, from our own. For women,too, there seems to be that tangle of supplication and

possessiveness, that descent toward infantileundifferentiation, that omnipotent helplessness, that merger with the cosmic mother-warmth, that flushed pulse-quickened leap into overestimation, projection, generalmix-up.

The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided thatchildren were an unnatural strain on parents. So they

provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures calledan education. School is where you go between when your

parents cant take you and industry cant take you.

When I was a boy, the bestselling books were Steinbeck,Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner had, consideringhow hard he is to read, quite a middle-class readership.But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller aswell as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. Youdon't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop it's gone, dissolving.

Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're lesscomfortable with the written word.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picassohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updikehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picassohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updikehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picassohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updikehttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_13_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updikehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picassohttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


15/16

The temple is holy because it is not for sale.

To make the best of persons. It is to grow in the openair and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Literature is news that stays news.

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.

The man of understanding can no more sit quiet whilehis country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorantchild was infecting itself with tuberculosis under theimpression that it was merely eating jam tarts.

After you have exhausted business, politics,conviviality, etc. and have found that none finallysatisfy, or permanently wear, Nature remains.

Real education must ultimately be limited to one whoinsists on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I,who am curious about each, am not curious about God- I hear and behold God in every object, yetundersta nd God not in the least.

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far fromthe dance; poetry begins to atrophy when it gets toofar from music.

We Americans have yet to learn our own antecedents,and sort them, to unify them. They will be foundampler than has been supposed, and in widelydifferent sources. Impressed by New England writersand schoolmasters, we abandon ourselves to thenotion that our United States has been fashioned fromthe British Islands only, and essentially form a secondEngland only which is a very great mistake.

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to holdin higher esteem those who think alike than those whothink differently.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.

We are always in our own company.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thusdeceiving them concerning the value of existence.

What is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies,and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of humanrelations which have been poetically and rhetoricallyintensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and

binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten areillusions they are metaphors that have become worn outand have been drained of sensuous force, coins whichhave lost their embossing and are now considered as metaland no longer as coins.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of thatuniverse which is dispersed into numberless twinklingsolar systems, there was a star upon which clever beastsinvented knowing. After nature had drawn a few breaths,the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had todie. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still wouldnot have adequately illustrated how miserable, howshadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary thehuman intellect looks within nature. There were eternitiesduring which it did not exist. And when it is all over withthe human intellect, nothing will have happened.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Poundhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzschehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Poundhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitmanhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_14_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzschehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Poundhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html


16/16

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for thegood of its victims may be the most oppressive. Itwould be better to live under robber barons thanunder omnipotent moral busybodies.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, insteadof as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adultthemselves. To be concerned about being grown up,to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to

blush at the suspicion of being childish; these thingsare the marks of childhood and adolescence. But tocarry on into middle life or even into early manhoodthis concern about being adult is a mark of arresteddevelopment.

When you and I met, the meeting was over shortly, itwas nothing. Now it is growing something as weremember it. But still we know little about it. What itwill be when I remember it as I lie down to die, whatit makes in me all my days till thenthat is the realmeeting. The other is only the beginning of it."

God whispers to us in pleasures, speaks inconsciences, but shouts in our pains: it is hismegap hone to rouse a deaf world.

When t hey have really learned to love their neighbors as themselves, they will be allowed to lovethemselves as their neighbors.

100 % of us die. The percentage cannot be increased.

We are far too easily pleased.

The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid"dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is notdone even in concentration camps and labour camps.In those we see its final result. But it is conceivedand ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted)in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices,

by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernailsand smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raisetheir voice.

The elimination of conventional tests is necessary because,as soon as they are used as judgement-makinginstruments, the whole process of schooling shifts fromeducation to training intended to produce passing gradeson tests.

"Courses" turn out to be contingent upon testing. A"course" generally consists of a series of briefings for thegreat Trivia contest. It's a kind of rigid quiz show. And itseems to work only if the contestants value the "prize."The prize, of course, is a "grade." An appropriate gradeentitles the participant to continue playing the Triviagame. All the while, let's not forget, very little, if any,substantive intellectual activity is going on.

In plain, what passes for a curriculum in today's schools islittle else than a strategy of distraction. It is largely definedto keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense; which is to say, it doesnot allow inquiry into most of the critical problems thatcomprise the content of the world outside the school.

One of the main differences between the "advantaged"student and the "disadvantaged" is that the former has aneconomic stake in giving his attention to the curriculumwhile the latter does not. In other words, the onlyrelevance of the curriculum for the "advantaged" student isthat, if he does what he is told, there will be a tangible

payoff.

What is it that students do in the classroom? Well, mostlythey sit and listen to the teacher. Mostly, they are requiredto believe in authorities, or at least pretend to such belief when they take tests. Mostly they are required toremember. They are almost never required to makeobservations, formulate definitions, or perform anyintellectual operations that go beyond repeating whatsomeone else says is true. They are rarely encouraged toask substantive questions, although they are permitted toask about administrative and technical details. (How longshould the paper be? Does spelling count? When is theassignment due?) It is practically unheard of for studentsto play any role in determining what problems are worthstudying or what procedures of inquiry ought to be used.

HOME


PREVIOUS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postmanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postmanhttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Thinker_15_Article.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewishttp://web.mac.com/pyrrhonist/Pyrrhonist/Home.html

20291870 thinkers collection

Documents