Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

The perfection of art is to conceal art


The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present,
and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one
of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world


It is certain that if you would have the whole secret of a
people, you must enter into the intimacy of their religion


Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter
of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many
mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great


Universal orthodoxy is enriched by every new discovery
of truth: what at first appeared universal, by wishing
to stand still, sooner or later becomes a sect


What we share with another ceases to be our own


Time is the fairest and toughest judge


Bro. Edgar Quinet
French poet, historian and political philosopher
(Died this day 1875)



What are all political and social institutions, but always a religion,
which in realizing itself, becomes incarnate in the world?

[Tamrin]

All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach
by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of
approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower


When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond
the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline,
be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense
mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions


There are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to
conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values
and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context


There are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable
knowledge — the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism


Relationism signifies merely that all of the elements of meaning in
a given situation have reference to one another and derive their signif-
icance from this reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought


It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a
genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and
immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps
to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically


Today, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige,
each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one
position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially
disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until
now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain
traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation


Karl Mannheim
Hungarian-born German-British sociologist (Ideology & Utopia)
(Born this day 1893)



Human thought arises, and operates, not in a social vacuum but in a definite social milieu

[Tamrin]

Isn't everyone a part of everyone else?


You can't eat your friends and have them too


I suppose it's too bad people can't be a little more consistent.
But if they were, maybe they would stop being people


Hey, you want to hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you


I believed him because the truth is never hard to recognize. Nothing
is ever quite so drab and repetitious and forlorn and ludicrous as truth


Fights can be dumped in a dozen ways. Sometimes everybody
but the fighter knows. Sometimes only the fighter knows


Conscience. That stuff can drive you nuts


Budd Schulberg
American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer
(Born this day 1914)



I coulda' had class. I coulda' been a contender! But instead I got a one way ticket to Palookaville

[Tamrin]

What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn


A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops


Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.


Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions,
had always been the systematic organization of hatreds


No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean,
for words are slippery and thought is viscous


Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man


Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything


Henry Adams
U.S. historian, journalist, novelist and educator
(Died this day 1918)



Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit

[Tamrin]

I really don't know what's happened to me, but I have changed from top
to toe. I am living in a strange mixture of memories of yesterday and today


There can be no deeper despair, no pain less easy to assuage,
than losing a husband when you are young


We live from hour to hour, not even from day to day


There is beauty in the midst of tragedy. As if beauty
were condensing in the heart of ugliness. It's very strange


It's a wonderful, inspiring feeling to have real friends who
love and understand you. I have never had that feeling before


The impression that what is extraordinary is real, and that the real is the extraordinary


Being free to suffer alone is itself a consolation


Hélène Berr
Jewish French woman, novelist and Holocaust victim
(Born this day 1921)



What will become of me? I do not know where am I going or what tomorrow will bring

[Tamrin]

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that
the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have
read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man


Yes books are valuable. But no reading of books will take the place of a daily, candid,
honest examination of what one has recently done, and what one is about to do —
of a steady looking at one's self in the face (disconcerting though the sight may be)


Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope
that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true


Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste


Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste.
The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense


Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts


My mother is far too clever to understand anything she doesn't like


Arnold Bennett
English novelist and playwright
(Died this day 1931)



The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one
supreme effort — he never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature

[Tamrin]

A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while:
to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it


He who can transform himself has no one in the world but himself to blame
for his failings, no one but himself to hold responsible for his dissatisfaction


Not only does God play dice with the world — He does not let us see what He has rolled


Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it,
roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes
happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of
no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god
locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable


And do you believe in God? "I do." But you didn't think a robot would, right? "Right"


Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that
never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way


I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet


Stanislaw Lem
Polish satirical, philosophical, and science fiction writer
(Died this day 2006)



The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes

[Tamrin]

If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible.
Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end


Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you;
it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work


Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography,
censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made
difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under
an inadequate or lying language — this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable


Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience
and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and
our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to
undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other


If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and
hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up


The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth


The password is a flicker of an eyelash


Adrienne Rich
American feminist, poet, teacher and writer
(Died this day 2012)



Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

Friday’s Quotes:

Never affirm anything unless you are sure it is true


Never exaggerate, but express your feelings with moderation


Pain is never permanent


It is love alone that gives worth to all things


Satan would fly away before such realities, as from the plague. He is the friend of
lies, and a lie himself. He will have nothing to do with those who walk in the truth


The evil spirits keep us in terror, because we expose ourselves to the
assaults of terror by our attachments to honours, possessions, and pleasures


Be gentle to all and stern with yourself


Teresa of Avila
Spanish mystic philosopher, Saint and Doctor of the Catholic Church
(Born this day 1515)



Let nothing disturb thee; let nothing dismay thee: All thing pass; God never changes