Theodore Roszak: Quotes about life

Theodore Roszak was American social historian, social critic, writer. Explore interesting quotes on life.

Theodore Roszak: 86 quotes9 likes

“The process of apoptosis by which life and development are governed is profoundly communal. …Cells …need to be "encouraged" to live.”

Theodore Roszak

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.9 Deep Community
Context: Without apoptosis, life would not be possible.... when cells lose their ability to die, they run rampant, assuming that life-threatening form we call cancer.... The process of apoptosis by which life and development are governed is profoundly communal.... Cells... need to be "encouraged" to live.

“Without apoptosis, life would not be possible.”

Theodore Roszak

...when cells lose their ability to die, they run rampant, assuming that life-threatening form we call cancer. ...The process of apoptosis by which life and development are governed is profoundly communal. ...Cells ...need to be "encouraged" to live.
Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.9 Deep Community

“The final stage of life… offers us the opportunity to detach from competitive, high-consumption priorities… At that point, life itself—the opportunity it offers for growth, for intellectual adventure, for the simple joys of love and companionship, for working out our salvation—comes to be seen as our highest value. …That is what I have always assumed it means to be countercultural.”

Theodore Roszak

The Making of an Elder Culture (2009)
Context: The final stage of life... offers us the opportunity to detach from competitive, high-consumption priorities... At that point, life itself—the opportunity it offers for growth, for intellectual adventure, for the simple joys of love and companionship, for working out our salvation—comes to be seen as our highest value.... That is what I have always assumed it means to be countercultural.

“It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.”

Theodore Roszak

“Science, in broad outline, can be divided into three parts: the study of the vast, the study of the tiny, and the study of life which… acts as audience to both the vast and the tiny.”

Theodore Roszak

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.9 Deep Community

“In the technocracy, nothing is any longer small or simple or readily apparent to the nontechnical man. Instead, the scale of intricacy or all human activities… transcends the competence of the amateurish citizen and inexorably demands the attention of specially trained experts. …even the most seemingly personal aspects of life. …In the absence of expertise, the great [productive} mechanism would surely break down, leaving us in the midst of chaos and poverty.”

Theodore Roszak

“Since the late 19th century, aging has been the normal state of all industrial societies; it is a sustained trend. Societies designed to cater to the needs of aging populations will soon become the accepted political condition of our species. Acknowledging that fact will, at some point, slide so smoothly into the conventional wisdom that future generations may not realize that this is a major new feature of modern life, this is different, this is not what human culture was ever meant to be—and it all started now.”

Theodore Roszak

The Making of an Elder Culture (2009)

“Life… becomes an anomalous puzzle that cannot be "explained" until scientists in laboratories find a way to animate the dead matter that is the normal condition of things. This amounts to saying that life has no "place" in the world until men—the gender that originally dominated the world and still does—can create it… in a laboratory and express it in a formula. Only then will we "understand" what life is.”

Theodore Roszak