“There are two things that kill a genius — a fatal disease and contentment. When a man is contented he goes to sleep. Voltaire had no chance to be contented, and so he wrote eternally and unceasingly, more than any other man in the history of the world.”

— Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

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Clarence Darrow 70

American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Li… 1857–1938

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It is a submissive world that modern man is in the habit of sensing, and he seems content with the riches of thinghood. Space is the limit of his ambitions, and there is little he desires besides it. Correspondingly, mans consciousness recedes more and more in the process of reducing his status to that of a consumer and manipulator. He has enclosed himself in the availability of things, with the shutters down and no sight of what is beyond availability.

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Book I, v, 8
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Source: The Advancement Of Learning
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