Quotes
Quotes about Art
Benevolence is a commitment to achieving the values derivable from life with other people in society, by treating them as potential trading partners, recognizing their humanity, independence, and individuality, and the harmony between their interests and ours.
Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
From the psychological point of view, the self-asserting emotions, derived from emergency reactions, involve a narrowing of consciousness; the participatory emotions an expansion of consciousness by identificatory processes of various kinds.
There is an accumulative cruelty in a number of men, though none in particular are ill-natured.
However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as "the most anti-social and evil of all passions.
This is the constitutional limitation of man's knowledge and interests, the fact that he cannot know more than a tiny part of the whole of society and that therefore all that can enter into his motives are the immediate effects which his actions will have in the sphere he knows.
...it is largely because civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
No man is an island- he is a holon. A Janus-faced entity who, looking inward, sees himself as a self-contained unique whole, looking outward as a dependent part. His self-assertive tendency is the dynamic manifestation of his unique wholeness, his autonomy and independence as a holon. Its equally universal antagonist, the integrative tendency, expresses his dependence on the larger whole to which he belongs: his 'part-ness.'.
We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. - The Heart's Domain.
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, deprecating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts, which is the function of science and art. There is no process by which to reach an ideal. There are no tests by which to verify it. It is therefore impossible to frame a proposition about an ideal which can be proved or disproved. It follows that the use of ideals is to be strictly limited to proper cases, and that the attempt to use ideals in social discussion does not deserve serious consideration.
...ideas have a tendency to live lives of their own, and having become a part of tradition, they are very difficult to root out. When summarized in a few neat words or phrases, these gems of wisdom become substitutes for thought, and gradually take on much of the status of revealed truth. Occasionally, some iconoclast sees fit to challenge one of them, and a brief flurry ensues, after which things go on about as before. It is easy to think of plenty of ideas that are passing, if they have not already passed, beyond the stage of effective discussion.
Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.
A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.
Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it. - The Heart's Domain.
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.
Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.
The sexual regions constitute a particularly vulnerable spot, and remain so even in man, and the need for their protection which thus exists conflicts with the prominent display required for sexual allurement. This end is far more effectively attained, with greater advantage and less disadvantage, by concentrating the chief ensigns of sexual attractiveness on the upper and more conspicuous parts of the body. This method is well-nigh universal among animals as well as in man.
Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.
No child is born with a really cold heart, and it is only in proportion as we lose that youthful heart that we lose the inner warmth in ourselves.
All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.
Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a "good thing" to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.
A line runs from the meditations of the heart to the words of the mouth. The meditations are not clear to us until the mouth utters its words. If what the mouth utters is unclear or foolish or mendacious, it must be that the meditations are the same. But the line runs both ways. The words of the mouth will become the meditations of the heart, and the habit of loose talk loosens the fastenings of our understanding.
