Congressional speech (1849)
Context: I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also. He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up all the vacuities of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. Superstition is the mathematical complement of religious truth; and just so much less as the life of a human being is reclaimed to good, just so much more is it delivered over to evil. The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet of ours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown, and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless reign.
Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 124; Essay "Politics as a vocation"
Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 124; Essay "Politics as a vocation"
Context: The problem — the experience of the irrationality of the world — has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Context: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.
“Destruction is also creation.”
Source: Ref: en.wikiquote.org - J. Posadas / Quotes / War is Not the End of the World
Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 10: Of Motives
Kirilov
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Aphorism XV
Novum Organum (1620), Book II
“The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.”
The words of Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius.
Misattributed
The First Octavo Notebook https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gD981HZ190BUJF-3czZNX3DsFWvqp3cq-Z4QS4d-9gw/edit?hl=en
The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)
On Virginity 6.1
[Harrison, Carol, Truth in a Heresy?, The Expository Times, 2016, 112, 3, 78–82, 10.1177/001452460011200302]
On Virginity
