“.. since our past is the greatest in the world and thus all the more dangerous for our life!... We must smash, demolish and destroy our traditional harmony, which makes us fall into a 'gracefullness' created by timid and sentimental cubs”

—  Umberto Boccioni

cubs refers sneering to the Cubists
as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
1912, Boccioni's 'Sculptural Manifesto', 1912,

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote ".. since our past is the greatest in the world and thus all the more dangerous for our life!... We must smash, demolish…" by Umberto Boccioni?
Umberto Boccioni photo
Umberto Boccioni 41
Italian painter and sculptor 1882–1916

Related quotes

Patrick Henry photo

“United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Last public speech before his death (4 March 1799); as quoted in Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondences and Speeches (1891) by William Wirt Henry, Vol. 2, p. 609-610 http://www.archive.org/stream/pathenrylife02henrrich#page/608/mode/2up
1790s, Speech (1799)
Context: Let us trust God and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs. Let us preserve our strength for the French, the English, the Germans, or whoever else shall dare invade our territory, and not exhaust it in civil commotions and intestine wars.

Karl Jaspers photo

“Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On My Philosopy (1941)

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath
Theodore Roosevelt photo

“We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Address at Oyster Bay, New York (27 July 1904) http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/104.txt, in response to the committee appointed to notify him of his nomination for the Presidency.
1900s

Paul Keating photo

“It was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

1992 The Redfern Speech, launching International Year of Indigenous Peoples

Philip K. Dick photo

“Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not perceive. Even though I can't prove that, even though it isn't logical — I believe it.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Werner Erhard photo

“We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution – it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. What we create together is a relationship in which our work can show up as making a difference in people's lives. I welcome the unprecedented opportunity for us to work globally on that which concerns us all as human beings. If not you, who? If not now, when? If not here, where?”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Source: The Graduate Review (1980)

Karl Jaspers photo

“Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On My Philosopy (1941)
Context: Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

Thucydides photo

“It must be thoroughly understood that war is a necessity, and that the more readily we accept it, the less will be the ardor of our opponents, and that out of the greatest dangers communities and individuals acquire the greatest glory.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.144-[3]
Variant translation: We must realize, too, that, both for cities and for individuals, it is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.
As translated by Rex Warner (1954).
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“We experience moments in which we accept ourselves, because we feel that we have been accepted by that which is greater than we. If only more such moments were given us! For it is such moments that make us love our life, that make us accept ourselves, not in our goodness and self-complacency, but in our certainty of the eternal meaning of our life.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.77-78, (Paul Tillich: The Shaking of the Foundations. 1963. Pelican Books. p. 164

Related topics