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.
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The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a read more
The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every read more
As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.
What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.
What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.
The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously read more
The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.
There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self read more
There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They asked to be deceived.
Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest read more
Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams.
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of read more
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
