“Desire is the base of all disharmony in this world.”
Scott Shaw (1958) American actor
The Warrior is Silent
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923). <br class="br">1923 <br class="br">Context: ... some of those to-day who are loudest in their protestations of international pacifism are loudest in their protestations that nothing but a class war can save society. No truer word was ever said by a philosopher than was said by Kant, a century ago or more, that we are civilised to the point of wearisomeness, but before we can be moralised we have a long way to go. It is to moralise the world that we all desire.... We have to remember one more thing besides that, that since the War we must not make the mistake of thinking that what may be war weariness is necessarily an excess of innate good will, and we cannot help noting that there has arisen in Europe, in the few years since the peace, a strong local feeling in different places of an extreme nationalism which, unless corrected, may bear in what is not of itself an evil thing the seeds of much future peril for the peace and harmony of Europe.
“Desire is the base of all disharmony in this world.”
Scott Shaw (1958) American actor
The Warrior is Silent
“I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.”
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna
[Swami Nikhilananda, Holy Mother, 217]
Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician
Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), pp. 192-193
“I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have—power.”
Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) English industrialist, business partner of James Watt
Speaking to Boswell of his engineering works, in James Boswell ‘The Life of Samuel Johnson’
“Aren't we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?”
Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature
Source: Life is Elsewhere
“Unspoken is whatever
we have not desired with all our heart.”
Alexis Karpouzos (1967)
Source: The self-criticism of science