L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason) (1945)
“Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental.”
Chap. VII: Noble Life And Common Life, Or Effort And Inertia
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)
Context: The mass-man would never have accepted authority external to himself had not his surroundings violently forced him to do so. As to-day, his surroundings do not so force him, the everlasting mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to other authority and feels himself lord of his own existence. On the contrary the select man, the excellent man is urged, by interior necessity, to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, whose service he freely accepts.… Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitu…" by José Ortega Y Gasset?
José Ortega Y Gasset 85
Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist 1883–1955Related quotes
Dale Carnegie
(1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
Albert Schweitzer
(1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Reverence for Life (1969)
“An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.”
Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Quoted by George Bernard Shaw in a letter to Ellen Terry, 25 September 1896.
Context: On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
“Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.”
Section 26
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts
Context: Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man
Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3
Robert Ley
(1890–1945) Nazi politician
Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114
Walker Percy
(1916–1990) Southern philosophical novelist
Source: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book