“A great leap in the dark”

— Thomas Hobbes

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Thomas Hobbes 97

English philosopher, born 1588 1588–1679

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“Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

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“Great leaps forward in history are often, in fact, giant leaps back.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

The Reactionary Temptation (2017)
Context: Great leaps forward in history are often, in fact, giant leaps back. The Reformation did initiate brutal sectarian warfare. The French Revolution did degenerate into barbarous tyranny. Communist utopias — allegedly the wave of an Elysian future — turned into murderous nightmares. Modern neoliberalism has, for its part, created a global capitalist machine that is seemingly beyond anyone’s control, fast destroying the planet’s climate, wiping out vast tracts of life on Earth while consigning millions of Americans to economic stagnation and cultural despair.
And at an even deeper level, the more we discover about human evolution, the more illusory certain ideas of progress become.

“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“I am powerless, helpless. Each time it’s a leap in the dark. A deliberate encounter with the unknown.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), Apology

“Youth is fair, a graceful stag,
Leaping, playing in a park.
Age is gray, a toothless hag,
Stumbling in the dark.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Sewing the Wedding Gown, 1906. Nine One-Act Plays from Yiddish. Translated by Bessie F. White, Boston, John W. Luce & Co., 1932, p. 127.

“But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Source: Rabbit, Run

“I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Variant: I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air.
Source: Poems, 1923-1954

“Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,
It leaps in the sky.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Awake, My Heart, to Be Loved http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6639&poem=27759, l. 1-3.
Poetry

“The Land is neither of the Dark nor the Light, nor ever was. Its enchantment was of a separate kind, the magic of the mind and the hand and the eye, that owes no allegiance because it is neither good nor bad. It has no more to do with the behaviour of men, or the great absolutes of the Light and the Dark, than does the blossom of a rose or the curving leap of a fish.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Silver on the Tree (1977), Chapter 12 “The Journey” (p. 164)

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