It is not sheer malice that pricks our ears to evil reports about our fellow men. For there are frequent moments when we feel lower than the lowest of mankind, and this opinion of ourselves isolates us. Hence the rumor that all flesh is base comes almost as a message of hope. It breaks down the wall that has kept us apart, and we feel one with humanity.
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The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. In times of crises read more
The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. In times of crises these men need the guidance of some kind of theory; but, being unfamiliar with the field of ideas, they do not know that alternatives to the popular theories are possible. They know only what they have always been taught.
Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of read more
Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is read more
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.
Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up read more
Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.
My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.
My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.
I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.
I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.
Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has read more
Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.
