“Intellectual over-indulgence is the most gratuitous and disgraceful form which excess can take, nor is there any the consequences of which are more disastrous.”

— Samuel Butler

Intellectual Self-Indulgence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

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 "Intellectual over-indulgence is the most gratuitous and disgraceful form which excess can take, nor is there any the co…" by Samuel Butler?

Samuel Butler 232

novelist 1835–1902

Related quotes

“The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. I take a very different view. I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud of than which we should be ashamed.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture

“All too often, problems are left to simmer until too late, with disastrous consequences to the people who become victims of the excesses committed on them by self-centred and self-serving leaders.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Speech at a farewell function for outgoing United States Ambassador David Lyon, 15 July 2005 (excerpts)

“And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Lecture V, section 88.
The Eagle's Nest (1872)

“Nor do I understand how anyone can feel that industrial progress has been made at the expense of social progress nor why any American should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or statism, which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions, can produce a happier and more prosperous society.”

Charles Erwin Wilson (1890–1961) American secretary of Defence

Charles E. Wilson in, The Commonwealth: A Forum for Creation of Public Opinion, p. 1946

“Yes, from the Right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the Left we shall take Socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National-Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe.”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

As quoted in Hitler and I, Otto Stresser, Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company (1940) p. 9

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 46 (29 January 1788) Full text at Wikisource
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

“Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

“Community in our European tradition is not the outcome of an act of authoritative foundation, nor a gift from nature or its gods, nor the result of management, planning and design, but the consequence of a conspiracy, a deliberate, mutual, somatic and gratuitous gift to each other.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

The Cultivation of Conspiracy (1998)
Context: Community in our European tradition is not the outcome of an act of authoritative foundation, nor a gift from nature or its gods, nor the result of management, planning and design, but the consequence of a conspiracy, a deliberate, mutual, somatic and gratuitous gift to each other. The prototype of that conspiracy lies in the celebration of the early Christian liturgy in which, no matter their origin, men and women, Greeks and Jews, slaves and citizens, engender a physical reality that transcends them. The shared breath, the con-spiratio are the "peace" understood as the community that arises from it.

“The world, and whatever that be which we call the heavens, by the vault of which all things are enclosed, we must conceive to be a deity, to be eternal, without bounds, neither created nor subject at any time to destruction. To inquire what is beyond it is no concern of man; nor can the human mind form any conjecture concerning it.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book II, sec. 1.
Naturalis Historia

“Intellectual over-indulgence is the most gratuitous and disgraceful form which excess can take, nor is there any the consequences of which are more disastrous.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Samuel Butler 232

Related quotes

Related topics