It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.
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Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.
Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness.
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.
Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.
Our quarrel with the world is an echo of the endless quarrel proceeding within us.
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a read more
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
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.
Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be so sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure read more
Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be so sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure as he is, he shall shoot higher than he who aims at a bush.
Anybody who is 25 or 30 years old has physical scars from all sorts of things, from tuberculosis to polio. read more
Anybody who is 25 or 30 years old has physical scars from all sorts of things, from tuberculosis to polio. It's the same with the mind.
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, deprecating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a read more
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, deprecating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor read more
A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.
