“Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.”
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality (1993)
Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 40
“Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.”
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality (1993)
Prophesy Deliverance! (2002)
Metaphysics, again, is the Dynamics of Thought; treats of the primary Powers of Thought; occupies itself with the mere Soul of the Science of Thinking. Metaphysical ideas stand related to one another, like thoughts without words. Men often wondered at the stubborn Incompletibility of these two Sciences; each followed its own business by itself; there was a want everywhere, nothing would suit rightly with either. From the very first, attempts were made to unite them, as everything about them indicated relationship; but every attempt failed; the one or the other Science still suffered in these attempts, and lost its essential character. We had to abide by metaphysical Logic, and logical Metaphysic, but neither of them was as it should be.
Pupils at Sais (1799)
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 11 (p. 130)
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
(Author's Note, p. xvii).
Book Sources, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2003)
“If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it.”
Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 73
“Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom.”
Section 1 : Give Responsibility to Vitally Necessary Work!
Variant translation: Work democracy introduces into liberal thinking a decisive new insight: the working masses who carry the burden of social existence are not conscious of their social responsibility. Nor are they — as the result of thousands of years of suppression of rational thinking, of the natural love function and of the scientific comprehension of living functioning — capable of the responsibility for their own freedom. Another insight contributed by work democracy is the finding that politics is in itself and of necessity unscientific: it is an expression of human helplessness, impoverishment and suppression.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom. The masses of people who work and bear the burden of social existence on their shoulders neither are conscious of their social responsibility nor are they capable of assuming the responsibility for their own freedom. This is the result of the century-long suppression of rational thinking, the natural functions of love, and scientific comprehension of the living. Everything related to the emotional plague in social life can be traced back to this incapacity and lack of consciousness. It is work-democracy's contention that, by its very nature, politics is and has to be unscientific, i. e., that it is an expression of human helplessness, poverty, and suppression.
Letter to L. C. Dunsterville, September 1916. Quoted in Lord Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978 (p.271).