“Perhaps what I would like is a truly democratic culture. Not a polemic nor a moralistic culture in the arts but a culture which permits one man to speak to another honestly and modestly and in freedom and to say what he thinks and what he feels, to express his doubts and his fears, his immoral as well as his moral impulses, to say what he thinks is true and what he thinks is false, and what he likes and what he does not like. What I am against is that we should all engage in the most vigorous and most polemic lying to each other for each other's benefit.”

— George Oppen

Who could have the conceit, the self-confidence to believe that that is what we should do throughout all the rest of human history?
Letter to Charles Humboldt (mid-1962), p. 64
The Selected Letters of George Oppen (1990)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Perhaps what I would like is a truly democratic culture. Not a polemic nor a moralistic culture in the arts but a cultu…" by George Oppen?

George Oppen 6

American poet 1908–1984

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“He lies on a regular basis. He says what he feels that he needs to say for his own benefit, and then he does what he feels that he needs to do for his own benefit as well. And all too often it doesn’t go together.”

Merav Michaeli (1966) Israeli politician

About Benjamin Netanyahu, as quoted in Demonstrators flood the streets demanding equal rights for gays https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Hundreds-demonstrate-for-LGBT-rights-in-Jerusalem-Tel-Aviv-and-Haifa-563115 (July 22, 2018) by Rocky Baier, The Jerusalem Post.

“It is certainly true that whatever a man may do or say, the most significant thing about him is what he thinks; and significant also is how he came to think it, why he continued to think it, or, if he did not continue, what the influences were which caused him to change his mind.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Preface
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

“A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.”

John Bartholomew Gough (1817–1886) Anglo-American temperance orator

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 46.

“I am here to speak on freedom of speech. It is a great topic, and I am going to make my speech as free as possible. But you know that this cannot be done, for when anyone announces that he is going to speak his mind freely, everyone is frightened. This shows that there is no such thing as true freedom of speech. No one can afford to let his neighbors know what he is thinking about them. Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

" Of Freedom of Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=OM4eT2epYzwC&q="Society+can+exist+only+on+the+basis+that+there+is+some+amount+of+polished+lying+and+that+no+one+says+exactly+what+he+thinks"&pg=PA95#v=onepage", lecture given in China (4 March 1933)

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

In Ethical Religion, (Madras: S. Ganesan, 1922), p. 62 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015002732066?urlappend=%3Bseq=66
1920s
Variant: A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

“Some say ‘Man is what he eats’ and some say ‘A man’s thinking determines his character’. It might be even more true to say ‘A man’s life and character are governed by his breathing’! This is because a person can neither digest what he eats nor act up to his ideas unless his breathing qualifies him to do so.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing, p. 101

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IV, 18
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

“That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please himself. ¶ That state is a state of Freedom in which a man does what he likes to do in his working time and in his spare time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please God.”

Eric Gill (1882–1940) British artist

Art Nonsense and Other Essays (1929), published by Cassell; quoted in Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit by Malcolm Yorke, published by Tauris Parke ISBN 1-86064-584-4, p. 49

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

George Oppen 6

Related quotes

Related topics