“Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step towards escape from this vicious circle is to recognize that the apparent "ordinariness" of the world is a delusion. If we could become deeply and permanently convinced that the world "out there" is endlessly exciting, we would never again allow ourselves to become trapped in the swamp of "taken-for-grantedness". And we would become practically unkillable. Shaw says of his "Ancients" in Back to Methuselah "Even in the moment of death, their life does not fail them". "Life failure" is that feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we all have to accept defeat in the end. If we could learn the mental trick of causing the dynamo to accelerate, this illusion would never again be able to exert its power over us.”

— Colin Wilson

Source: The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved (2000), p. 14

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step tow…" by Colin Wilson?

Colin Wilson photo

Colin Wilson192

author 1931–2013

Related quotes

“In order to understand what the world would become, we must first know what it was.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 2, The World in 1400, p. 24.

“We ourselves become the bridges out over the interval that is the world and time.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 9 : Oh, The Steep Roofs of Paris
Context: We ourselves become the bridges out over the interval that is the world and time. It is a daring thing to fling ourselves out over that void that is black and scarlet below and green and gold above. A bridge does not abandon its first shore when it grows out in spans towards the further one.

“It is in everyone’s best interest to realize and remember that the default human way is to believe first and ask questions never. We become better thinkers by recognizing how poor we are at thinking.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

“There comes a time, not too long into the journey to God, when the realization that the world could work beautifully if we would give it the chance, begins to excite us. It becomes our new motivation.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service

“To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V.

“However much we are affected by the things of the world, however deeply they may stir and stimulate us, they become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows. Whatever cannot become the object of discourse - the truly sublime, the truly horrible or the uncanny - may find human voice through which to sound into the world, but it is not exactly human. We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Source: Men in Dark Times

“Now it seems to me that we are in a universalising period... If we are to have world peace, we should have an understanding of all the idioms of beauty because the members of humanity who have created these idioms of beauty are going to be a part of us. And I would say that we are in a period when we are discovering and becoming acquainted with these idioms for the first time.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

Modern Artists in America, R. Motherwell, A. Reinhardt and B. Karpel, First series, New York 1952, p. 28
1950's

“It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”

Ken Kesey book Kesey's Garage Sale

Source: Kesey's Garage Sale

“We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

“If it could be brought about that all the billions of beings who inhabit this sphere would refrain from all acts which would in any way mar the happiness of others, that moment the earth would be transformed. We have thousands of theories as to how to make the world better, and we struggle day and night to understand and control the great natural forces about us; but if we could only get inside of ourselves once and set ourselves to working right, the biggest step toward the Millennium would be taken.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), The Importance of Ethical Culture, p. 6

Related topics