“The past, when it is merely known historically (that is, as a subject for abstract study), somehow piles itself up outside our real lives. … I think that one of the duties of a philosopher, if he shows himself worthy of his vocation today, is to attack quite directly those dissimulating forces which are all working toward what might be called the neutralization of the past; and whose conjoint effect consists in arousing in contemporary man a feeling of what I should like to call insulation in time.”

— Gabriel Marcel

Source: Man Against Mass Society (1952), p. 39

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Gabriel Marcel 10

French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Ch… 1889–1973

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