Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected "Problems" of "Logic" (Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik" (1984), translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1994, ISBN 0253004381, p. 7)
“What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged
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Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes
“Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.”
Source: Pensées and Other Writings
Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters (1865)
Context: Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him … he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!
Return Trip to Nirvana from Sunday Telegraph (1967).
Context: I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.
Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 143; quoted in Criminal Minds, "The Crossing" [episode 3.18].
Source: At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1996), p.45 as cited in: Gert Korthof (1998) "Kauffman at home in the Universe: The secret of life is auto-catalysis". Book review, 20 Oct 1998 ( online http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho32.htm)
Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/07/chemical-weapons in the House of Commons (7 March 1989).
1980s