“All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary.”

— William James

"The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" in address to the Yale Philosophical Club, published in the International Journal of Ethics (April 1891) http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/American/mp&ml.htm
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
Context: All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience.

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William James 246

American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910

James Redfield book The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

Source: The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

“Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. He is a madman, an immolator, wishful of burning, and slaughter, and sacrificing.”

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

As quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 407

“Equally unfounded is the complaint that the study of science and the technical application of the forces of nature gives to mankind a thoroughly material direction, makes them proud of their knowledge and power, and alienates ideal endeavours. The deeper we penetrate into the harmonious action of natural forces regulated by eternal unalterable laws, and yet so thickly veiled from our complete comprehension, the more we feel on the contrary moved to humble modesty, the smaller appears to us the extent of our knowledge, the more active is our endeavour to draw more from the inexhaustible fountain of knowledge, and understanding, and the higher rises our admiration of the endless wisdom which ordains and penetrates the whole creation.”

Werner von Siemens (1816–1892) German inventor and industrialist

Bonnier Corporation. Popular Science https://books.google.com/books?id=tyoDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Apr 1887,Vol. 30, No. 46. [0161-7370]. pp. 814-820\
Werner von Siemens (1895). Scientific & technical papers of Werner von Siemens. J. Murray. p. 518

“The religious ideal of Israel was the theocracy. But the theocracy meant the complete penetration of the national life by religious morality. It meant politics in the name of God.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 8

“By the path into which Lange has led us we therefore ascend from the agnostic-critical standpoint to the higher and invigorating one of a thorough, all-sided, and affirmative idealism.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Later German Philosophy, p.171

“An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence — such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"The Question of Peace" (July–August 1915) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jul/x02.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 293.
1910s

“Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.”

Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) Indian theologian, politician and philosopher

Source: quoted in Asma Afsaruddin - Striving in the Path of God_ Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought-Oxford University Press (2013) 209-11 (Maududi , S. Abul A‘la . Jihad in Islam . Salimiah, KW , 1977 .)

“This explains the instant satisfaction and growing reward which comes to every man who aspires to a higher life, who covets wisdom, who pursues beauty, who idealizes and worships his ideals.”

John William Lloyd (1857–1940) American anarchist, sexologist, utopian theorist and author (1857-1940)

Source: The Natural Man (1902), p. 100

“Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

“In modern civilized communities… the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 84

“All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary.”

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