Attributed to Carl Menger in: Ludwig Von Mises, " Comments about the mathematical treatment of economic problems https://mises.org/journals/jls/1_2/1_2_2.pdf." Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1977, 1(2), p. 100
“And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.”
Variant: And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others.
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 25.
Return from the Excursion, Riders on Earth (1978)
No. 74 (September 15, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Awakening of Western thought will not be complete until that thought steps outside itself and comes to an understanding with the search for a world-view as this manifests itself in the thought of mankind as a whole. We have too long been occupied with the developing series of our own philosophical systems, and have taken no notice of the fact that there is a world-philosophy of which our Western philosophy is only a part. If, however, one conceives philosophy as being a struggle to reach a view of the world as a whole, and seeks out the elementary convictions which are to deepen it and give it a sure foundation, one cannot avoid setting our own thought face to face with that of the Hindus, and of the Chinese in the Far East. … Our Western philosophy, if judged by its own latest pronouncements, is much naiver than we admit to ourselves, and we fail to perceive this only because we have acquired the art of expressing what is simple in a pedantic way.
Statement to a TImes reporter in 1990, as quoted in "The wit and wisdom of Boris" in Guardian Unlimited (23 April 2007)
1990s
“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”
Abott (2002) “Welcome to the University of Chicago http://www.ditext.com/abbott/abbott_aims.html Aims of Education Address. 2002
Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 15.
