Quotes
Quotes about Nation
...the conviction persists - though history has shown it to be a hallucination - that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place.
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.
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.
The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.
Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society.
It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both in the marketplace and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequal initiative and drive. And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination.
...there is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American...is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners...Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.
When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.
The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
Advertising enriches life by quickening the imagination, arousing interest and enlarging the taste.
A heavy guilt rests upon us for what the whites of all nations have done to the colored peoples. When we do good to them, it is not benevolence--it is atonement.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Only in your imagination can you revise.
Actually, I have only two things to worry about now: afterlife and reincarnation.
