
“Hallucination doesn’t preclude a rational response to that same hallucination.”
Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 19 (p. 319)
The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert
Context: A rational disposition must necessarily preclude a romantic outlook in life, and only the failures of this world can afford to dispense with a rational disposition.
“Hallucination doesn’t preclude a rational response to that same hallucination.”
Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 19 (p. 319)
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: The restoration of our world-view can come only as a result of inexorably truth-loving and recklessly courageous thought. Such thinking alone is mature enough to learn by experience how the rational, when it thinks itself out to a conclusion, passes necessarily over into the non-rational. World- and life-affirmation and ethics are non-rational. They are not justified by any corresponding knowledge of the nature of the world, but are the disposition in which, through the inner compulsion of our will-to-live, we determine our relation to the world.
What the activity of this disposition of ours means in the evolution of the world, we do not know. Nor can we regulate this activity from outside; we must leave entirely to each individual its shaping and its extension. From every point of view, then, world- and life-affirmation and ethics are non-rational, and we must have the courage to admit it.
Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 17
“Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay.”
Q&A page at the Terry Goodkind Official Site http://www.prophets-inc.com/communicate/q_and_a.html
Context: People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.
All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.
Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.
Source: An Aristocracy of Everyone (1992), p. 26
“An odd outlook on life is the beginning of good comedic writing.”
Interview article at InfuzeMag.com http://www.infuzemag.com/interviews/archives/2004/03/phil_vischer_in.html
“Nothing sweetens life like a pleasant disposition.”
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 111
General Quotes