“The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.”

— Herbert Marcuse , book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 145-146

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Herbert Marcuse 105

German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist 1898–1979

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 82, p. 88
Context: The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion,… In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.

“I believe every creature is born with the inalienable right of freedom. Freedom to live in its natural environment, with its own kind, making its own decisions. I believe the law should prohibit the enslavement of all non human species for any purpose whatever.”

Jim Morris (bodybuilder) (1935–2016) American bodybuilder

"Black Male Vegan: 77-Year-Old Bodybuilder Jim Morris Proves Vegans Can Be Muscular & Healthy" http://frugivoremag.com/2012/10/black-male-vegan-77-year-old-bodybuilder-jim-morris-proves-vegans-can-be-muscular-healthy/, interview with Frugivore magazine (October 2, 2012).

“Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Interview, Los Angeles Times (7 January 1970)
1970s

“The purpose of the State is, as we have already shown in our last lecture, no other than that of the Human Race itself:-to order all its relations according to the Laws of Reason. It is only after the Age of Reason as Science shall have been traversed, and we shall have arrived at the Age of Reason as Art, that the State can reflect upon this purpose with clear consciousness. Till then it constantly promotes this purpose, but without its own knowledge, or free pre meditated design; prompted thereto by the natural law of the development of our Race, even while it has a totally different purpose in view;—with which purpose of its own, Nature has indissolubly bound up the purpose of the whole Race.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 168

“We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions — divisions which have all lasted too long. Its purpose is national, not regional. Its purpose is to promote a more abiding commitment to freedom, a more constant pursuit of justice, and a deeper respect for human dignity.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Civil Rights Bill signing speech (1964)

“O, for a voice of power to arouse the human spirit from its death in life of animality, to quicken it with a fit consciousness of its own nature, to lift it to an adequate comprehension of the purposes for which the sublime thoughts of God, of duty, of disinterested love, of heaven are opened within!”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 317

“The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 45
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.

“I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfilment.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 26.

“Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Grumbles from the Grave

Letter to Alice Dalgliesh, the editor who was censoring his manuscript for Red Planet, regarding gun control registration and control
Grumbles from the Grave (1989)
Context: Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat. Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.

“The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: "Words of a Rebel"; as quoted in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 26

“The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.”

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Herbert Marcuse 105

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