Collected Aphorisms
Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
“The main objective is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the great one’s thinking.”
Dreigroschenroman (1934), reprinted in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 916.
“Crudely effective, but wildly inefficient.”
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 17 (p. 334)
“I am made, crudely, for success.”
1958-04-22
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Source: The Collected Poems
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”
Source: The Empire Strikes Back
“Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.”
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries
“Modesty answers not the crude how of femininity, but the beautiful why.”
Source: A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.”
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Context: Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
“Is perception equivalent to existence?”
How to Save Your Own Life (1977)
