“Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which … can be called “public” or “popular” opinion.”
Source: What is Philosophy? (1964), p. 15
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José Ortega Y Gasset85
Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist 1883–1955Related quotes
“"Cuckoo!"
"Cuckoo!"
While I meditated
on that theme
day dawned.”
Fukuda Chiyo-ni (1703–1775) Japanese writer
Source: Ikuko Atsumi, Kenneth Rexroth. Women Poets of Japan. 1982. p. 53
“The prejudiced and obstinate man does not so much hold opinions, as his opinions hold him.”
Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 438.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician
Source: Letter to Lord Northbrook (12 June 1874), quoted in S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905 (Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 104.
Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)
Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), p. 17
Giraut de Bornelh (1138–1220) French writer
Anonymous 13th century Provençal biographer of Guiraut de Bornelh, cited from H. J. Chaytor The Troubadours of Dante (1902) pp. 29-30; translation from The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) vol. 6. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06570b.htm <br class="br">Criticism
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 48-50
“No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Source: 1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained. And hence, there are but two policies in regard to Slavery that can be at all maintained. The first, based on the property view that Slavery is right, conforms to that idea throughout, and demands that we shall do everything for it that we ought to do if it were right. We must sweep away all opposition, for opposition to the right is wrong; we must agree that Slavery is right, and we must adopt the idea that property has persuaded the owner to believe — that Slavery is morally right and socially elevating. This gives a philosophical basis for a permanent policy of encouragement. The other policy is one that squares with the idea that Slavery is wrong, and it consists in doing everything that we ought to do if it is wrong. [... ] I don't mean that we ought to attack it where it exists. To me it seems that if we were to form a government anew, in view of the actual presence of Slavery we should find it necessary to frame just such a government as our fathers did; giving to the slaveholder the entire control where the system was established, while we possessed the power to restrain it from going outside those limits. From the necessities of the case we should be compelled to form just such a government as our blessed fathers gave us; and, surely, if they have so made it, that adds another reason why we should let Slavery alone where it exists.