Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.
You May Also Like / View all maxioms
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.
In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
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.
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which read more
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape. - Aphorisms and Reflections.
Because they know not the forces of nature, and in order that they may have comrades in their ignorance, they read more
Because they know not the forces of nature, and in order that they may have comrades in their ignorance, they suffer not that others should search out anything, and would have us believe like rustics and ask no reason...But we ask in all things a reason must be sought.
Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.
When an elephant is in trouble even a frog will kick him.
When an elephant is in trouble even a frog will kick him.
Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning read more
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.
