1963 edition, p. 680
Human Action (1949)
“We can only choose between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative.”
Introduction
Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "We can only choose between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative." by Étienne Gilson?
Étienne Gilson 22
French historian and philosopher 1884–1978Related quotes
“Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.”
Tryon Edwards
(1809–1894) American theologian
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 68.
“The third kind of life is the life of contemplation”
Aristotle
(-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
The Ethics Of Aristotle (Vol. I), Bk. 1, Chapter III
Helen Keller
(1880–1968) American author and political activist
Letter published in the Manchester Advertiser (3 March 1911), quoted in A People's History of the United States (1980) page 345.
Context: Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?
“Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil not the strength to choose between the two.”
John Cheever
(1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer
The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1956 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
Jorge Luis Borges
(1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
Theodore Roosevelt
(1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Responding to the social theories of Benjamin Kidd, in "Kidd's 'Social Evolution'" in The North American Review (July 1895), p. 109
1890s
Context: A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else; but the prime factor in the preservation of a race is its power to attain a high degree of social efficiency. Love of order, ability to fight well and breed well, capacity to subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the community, these and similar rather humdrum qualities go to make up the sum of social efficiency. The race that has them is sure to overturn the race whose members have brilliant intellects, but who are cold and selfish and timid, who do not breed well or fight well, and who are not capable of disinterested love of the community. In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment's hesitation.
Morarji Desai
(1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister
19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967
Susan Sontag
(1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Context: We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions.