“Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.”
Part 3: "The Sense of Human Dignity", §5 (p. 61)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)
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Jacob Bronowski 79
Polish-born British mathematician 1908–1974Related quotes
Steve Jobs
“That which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before.”
IV, 45
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV
Interview with Robert Whytman for The Guardian (11 December 1979)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 64.
George Bernard Shaw, in Music and Letters, January 1920.
Criticism
"On the Modern Element in Modern Literature," Partisan Review (January/February 1961); reprinted as "On the Teaching of Modern Literature," Beyond Culture (1965)
Context: A real book reads us. I have been read by Eliot's poems and by Ulysses and by Remembrance of Things Past and by The Castle for a good many years now, since early youth. Some of these books at first rejected me; I bored them. But as I grew older and they knew me better, they came to have more sympathy with me and to understand my hidden meanings. Their nature is such that our relationship has been very intimate. No literature has ever been so shockingly personal as that of our time — it asks every question that is forbidden by polite society.
Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 266
Quote of Jawlensky's letter, 12 June, 1938 to P. Willibrord Verkade, as cited in Leben und Werk, 1860- 1938, Bernd Fäthke, Prestel Verlag, 1980, ISBN 9783791308869, as cited on http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/marianne-werefkin/#literatur on the website Fembio, by Luise F. Pusch - transl. Joey Horsley, p. 19
1936 - 1941
"The Mindfulness of Man", p. 424
Interpretations and Forecasts 1922-1972 (1973)
Context: The relation between psyche and soma, mind and brain, are peculiarly intimate; but, as in marriage, the partners are not inseparable: indeed their divorce was one of the conditions for the mind's independent history and its cumulative achievements.
But the human mind possesses a special advantage over the brain: for once it has created impressive symbols and has stored significant memories, it can transfer its characteristic activities to materials like to stone and paper that outlast the original brain's brief life-span. When the organism dies, the brain dies, too, with all its lifetime accumulations. But the mind reproduces itself by transmitting its symbols to other intermediaries, human and mechanical, than the particular brain that first assembled them.