“Once we can see how this question of freedom of the will has been vitiated by post-romantic philosophy, with its inbuilt tendency to laziness and boredom, we can also see how it came about that existentialism found itself in a hole of it’s own digging, and how the philosophical developments since then have amounted to walking in circles round that hole.”
Source: The Angry Years (2007), p. 214
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Colin Wilson 192
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Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IX, The Future Of Liberalism, p. 117.
“A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.”
Quoting a schoolchild in "English as She Is Taught"
Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity. The first question and the last which it has to answer is, Whether and how far it recognises man more as a spirit than a machine? Whenever some ancient civilisation fell into decay and died, it was owing to causes which produced callousness of heart and led to the cheapening of man's worth; when either the state or some powerful group of men began to look upon the people as a mere instrument of their power; when, by compelling weaker races to slavery and trying to keep them down by every means, man struck at the foundation of his greatness, his own love of freedom and fair-play. Civilisation can never sustain itself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone man is true can only be nourished by love and justice.
“Nietzsche's problem is how to be a philosopher once he has grasped the finitude of philosophy.”
Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 5, Nietzsche's Styles, p. 96
Remarks by President Obama at YSEALI Town Hall https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/07/remarks-president-obama-yseali-town-hall (7 September 2016)
2016
100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)
New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)
“You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.”
Source: Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step (1970), p. 8.
Book IV, Part 2, Section 4
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)
Context: The question here is not, “How conscience ought to be guided? For Conscience is its own General and Leader; it is therefore enough that each man have one. What we want to know is, how conscience can be her own Ariadne, and disentangle herself from the mazes even of the most raveled and complicated casuistical theology. Here is an ethical proposition that stands in need of no proof: No Action May At Any Time Be Hazarded On The Uncertainty That Perchance It May Not Be Wrong (Quod dubitas, ne feceris! Pliny - which you doubt, then neither do) Hence the Consciousness, that Any Action I am about to perform is Right, is in itself a most immediate and imperative duty. What actions are right, - what wrong – is a matter for the understanding, not for conscience. p. 251