...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.
You May Also Like / View all maxioms
Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.
Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.
It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in read more
It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at.
What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a read more
What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.
The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so read more
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands read more
It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.
Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are read more
Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call "genius" has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve.
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby read more
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
