John Gray (terapeuta) cytaty (180 cytatów)

"Neoconned!: How Blair took New Labour for a ride," http://web.archive.org/web/20090404081217/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/neoconned-how-blair-took-new-labour-for-a-ride-454209.html The Independent (2007-06-22)

“The repression of liberty that took place in the countries in which Communist regimes were established cannot be adequately explained as a product of backwardness, or of errors in the application of Marxian theory. It was the result of a resolute attempt to realize an Enlightenment utopia - a condition of society in which no serious form of conflict any longer exists.”

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John Gray

'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.99)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

“A high-tech Green utopia, in which a few humans live happily in balance with the rest of life, is scientifically feasible; but it is humanly unimaginable. If anything like it ever comes about, it will not be through the will of homo rapiens.”

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John Gray książka Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: Yet another utopia (p. 184)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Today those who peer into the future want only relief from anxiety. Unable to face the prospect that the cycles of war will continue, they are desperate to find a pattern of improvement in history. It is only natural that believers in reason, lacking any deeper faith and too feeble to tolerate doubt, should turn to the sorcery of numbers. Happily there are some who are ready to assist them. Just as the Elizabethan magus transcribed tables shown to him by angels, the modern scientific scryer deciphers numerical auguries of angels hidden in ourselves.”

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John Gray

In the Puppet Theatre: Dark mirrors, Hidden Angels and an Algorithmic Prayer-Wheel (p. 99)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.”

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John Gray

In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“The truth that Dostoevsky puts in the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor is that humankind has never sought freedom, and never will. The secular religions of modern times tell us that humans yearn to be free; and it is true that they find restraint of any kind irksome. Yet it is rare that individuals value their freedom more than the comfort that comes with servility, and rarer still for whole peoples to do so.”

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John Gray książka Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: The Grand Inquisitor and Flying Fish (p. 123)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Theories of modernisation are cod-scientific projections of Enlightenment values. They tell us nothing about the future. But they do help us to understand the present. They show the lingering power of the Christian faith that history is a moral drama, a tale of progress or redemption, in which - despite everything we know of it - morality rules the world.”

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John Gray książka Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: The myth of modernisation (p. 174)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“In the life of the academic mind, the owl of Minerva seldom flies as early as the dusk.”

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John Gray

'Definition of the Political Thought of Tlön' (p.91)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

“The practical effects of the Marxian-Federovian cult of technology were ruinous. Inspired by a materialist philosophy, the Soviet Union inflicted more far-reaching and lasting damage on the material environment than any regime in history. Green earth became desert, and pollution rose to life-threatening levels. No advantage to mankind was gained by the Soviet destruction of nature. Soviet citizens lived no longer than people in other countries - many of them a good deal less.”

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John Gray książka Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: Nikolai Federov, Bolshevism and the Technological Pursuit of Immortality (p. 138)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth - and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.”

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John Gray książka Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Truth and consequences (p. 26)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“The mass of mankind is ruled not by its intermittent moral sensations, still less by self-interest, but by the needs of the moment.”

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John Gray książka Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Green Humanism (p. 17)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot.”

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John Gray

A shattering moment in America's fall from power (2008)