Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships
Context: The author is quite aware of the monstrous relations in human and international affairs brought forth by the egotistical principle of capital when it is not under pressure from socialist and progressive forces. He also thinks, however, that progressives in the West understand this better than he does and are waging a struggle against these manifestations. The author is concentrating his attention on what is before his eyes and on what is obstructing, from his point of view, a worldwide overcoming of estrangement, obstructing the struggle for democracy, social progress, and intellectual freedom.
Our country has started on the path of cleansing away the foulness of Stalinism. "We are squeezing the slave out of ourselves drop by drop" (an expression of Anton Chekhov). We are learning to express our opinions, without taking the lead from the bosses and without fearing for our lives.
“They based their extrapolations on numbers. That worked as long as money, which is easily measured numerically, was the principle motivating force in human affairs. But as time progressed, human actions became responsive instead to a multitude of incommensurable vectors.”
"The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton", Universe 7 (1977), ed. Terry Carr, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Storeys from the Old Hotel (1988), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
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Gene Wolfe 102
American science fiction and fantasy writer 1931–2019Related quotes
“Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations.”
2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)
The Age of Insight (2012)
Context: The Copernican revolution... revealed that the earth is not the center of the universe... The second, the Darwinian revolution... revealed that we are not created divinely or uniquely but instead evolved from simpler animals by a process of natural selection. The third great revolution, the Freudian revolution of Vienna 1900, revealed that we do not consciously control our own actions but are instead driven by unconscious motives. This... later led to the idea that human creativity... stems from conscious access to underlying, unconscious forces.
“Goethe; or, the Writer,” p. 272
1850s, Representative Men (1850)
Footnote: The apparent advantage of the generality of this definition of number disappears as soon as we consider complex numbers. According to my view, on the other hand, the notion of the ratio between two numbers of the same kind can be clearly developed only after the introduction of irrational numbers.
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)
“Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.”
What Elon Musk Taught Me About Growing A Business https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-elon-musk-taught-me-growing-business-dharmesh-shah/ (16 October 2017)
Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), pp. 119-120