“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.”

— Václav Havel , book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 11

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, …" by Václav Havel?

Václav Havel photo

Václav Havel 126

playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of … 1936–2011

Related quotes

“The existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the way of human aspirations.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: Modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who allegedly endowed man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the world: He was so far beyond the grasp of modern science that he was gradually pushed into a sphere of privacy of sorts, if not directly into a sphere of private fancy — that is, to a place where public obligations no longer apply. The existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the way of human aspirations.

“The world began in hazard and will end in it.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

“There is more of power to sanctify, elevate, strengthen, and cheer in the word Jesus (Jehovah-Saviour) than in all the utterances of man since the world began.”

Charles Hodge (1797–1878) American Presbyterian theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 87.

“With the world began a war that will only end with the world, and not before: that of man against nature, mind against matter, freedom against fate. History is nothing but the story of this endless struggle.”

Jules Michelet (1798–1874) French historian

[Introduction à l'histoire universelle, Michelet, Jules, Hachette, 1843, 9]
Introduction to Universal History , 1831, 1831

“Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.”

Maurice Druon (1918–2009) French writer

Source: El rey de hierro

“There's a light that is shining in the heart of a man,
it's the light that was shining when the world began.
There's a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew
and a light that is shining, friend, in me and in you.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

George Fox

“I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.”

Yōko Ogawa book The Housekeeper and the Professor

Source: The Housekeeper and the Professor

“Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

Source: The Hour of the Star (1977), p. 11

“The man who makes his religion a means to the gaining of this world, will lose both worlds alike; whereas the man who gives up this world for the sake of religion, will get both worlds alike.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307

Related topics