Quotes about compulsion (228 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“That ... is the road to the obedience of compulsion. But there is a shorter way to a nobler goal, the obedience of the will. When the interests of mankind are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be wiser than themselves. You may prove this on all sides: you may see how the sick man will beg the doctor to tell him what he ought to do, how a whole ship’s company will listen to the pilot.”

Xenophon book Cyropaedia

Bk. 1, ch. 6; as translated by Henry Graham Dakyns in Cyropaedia (2004) p. 29.
Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC

Way , Joy , Relation ships

“What kind of food you eat, how much you eat, how you eat, turning it from a compulsive pattern into a conscious process: this is the essence of fasting. Sadhana”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Food

“Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.”

Aristotle Rhetoric

Book I, 1369a.5
Rhetoric
Variant: All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire
Source: Selected Works

Nature , Chance , Anger

“The very essence of dhyana, or meditativeness, is that you push yourself to the highest possible intensity where, after some time, there is no effort. Now meditation will not be an act, but a natural consequence of the intensity that has been achieved. You can simply be. It is in these absolutely non-compulsive states of existence that the necessary atmosphere is set for the blossoming of an individual into a cosmic possibility. If”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Nature , Effort , Time

“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Thinking , Sense , Universe

“Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal, though pop culture magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan would suggest that it is. It is intense, often desperate. Te internal landscape is violent upheaval, a wild and ultimately cruel disregard of human individuality, a brazen, high-strung wanting that is absolute and imperishable, not attached to personality, no respecter of boundaries; ending not in sexual climax but in a human tragedy of failed relationships, vengeful bitterness in an aftermath of sexual heat, personality corroded by too much endurance of undesired, habitual intercourse, conflict, a wearing away of vitality in the numbness finally of habit or compulsion or the loneliness of separation.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 2

Personality , Loneliness

“Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy is everywhere”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.

Joy

“In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," Polemic (September/October 1946) - Full text online http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/english/e_swift
Context: In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

Law , Animals

“In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects that we love, but by losing all sense of Time.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Love , Sense , Time , Heart

“I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in John Skow, "Verdict on a Superstar," Time (1982-12-06)

Business , Sport

“Bob Dole seems to me to be a classic example of somebody who had no reason to run. You're 73 years old, you're already the third-most-powerful man in the country. So why? He seems to be drawn by some psychological compulsion. And it's too bad because in a lot of ways, he's an admirable person. There's a great story there. And Bill Clinton? Well, his campaign's fascinating to a student of politics. It's disturbing to someone who cares about certain issues. But politically, it seems to be working.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

As quoted in "A Newcomer to the Business of Politics has Seen Enough to Reach Some Conclusions About Restoring Voters' Trust", by Joe Frolik, inThe Plain Dealer (3 August 1996)
1990s

Way , Personality , Country

“Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino play losers very well. But my audience like to be in there vicariously with a winner. That isn't always popular with critics. My characters have sensitivity and vulnerabilities, but they're still winners. I don't pretend to understand losers. When I read a script about a loser I think of people in life who are losers and they seem to want it that way. It's a compulsive philosophy with them. Winners tell themselves, I'm as bright as the next person. I can do it. Nothing can stop me.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

On his role in The Beguiled
Source: Clint: The Life and Legend (1999), p. 189.

Life , People , Way , Understanding

“I will say in a few words why the anarchist doctrine is wrong. The anarchists say that the working class does not need a government: what is needs is to organize production. Government, they say, is a bourgeois invention, a bourgeois machine of compulsion, and the working class does not need to take governmental power. This is wrong from beginning to end.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Order by the commissar for military affairs - on the murder of count Mirbach
How the Revolution Armed (1923)

“Our decisions are to a much greater extent dependent on our desire to conform to the standards of our class and environment than we are inclined to admit. A considerable proportion of our reasoning is merely an automatic function, so to speak, of influences and impressions which have become part of us, and anyone who has been brought up from childhood in the stern school of military discipline is particularly apt to succumb to the hypnotic and compulsive force exercised by an order of word of command; a force which is logically entirely incomprehensible and which irresistibly undermines his will. In the straitjacket of a uniform, even though fully aware of their absurdity, an officer will carry out his instructions lie a sleep-walker, unresistingly and almost unconsciously.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Lie , School , Exercises , Decision

“The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

Life , Feeling , Thinking

“That it must have been hunger alone, which first drove man to slay the animals and feed upon their flesh and blood; and that this compulsion was no mere consequence of his removal into colder climes … is proved by the patent fact that great nations with ample supplies of grain suffer nothing in strength or endurance even in colder regions through an almost exclusively vegetable diet, as is shewn by the eminent length of life of Russian peasants; while the Japanese, who know no other food than vegetables, are further renowned for their warlike valour and keenness of intellect. We may therefore call it quite an abnormality when hunger bred the thirst for blood … that thirst which history teaches us can never more be slaked, and fills its victims with a raging madness, not with courage. One can only account for it all by the human beast of prey having made itself monarch of the peaceful world, just as the ravening wild beast usurped dominion of the woods … And little as the savage animals have prospered, we see the sovereign human beast of prey decaying too. Owing to a nutriment against his nature, he falls sick with maladies that claim but him, attains no more his natural span of life or gentle death, but, plagued by pains and cares of body and soul unknown to any other species, he shuffles through an empty life to its ever fearful cutting short.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Part III
Religion and Art (1880)

Life , Death , Hunger , Pain

“I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life , Effort , Time

“Whether it be generally recognized or not, what we call the civilized world, which for seven hundred years has been moving steadily forward in the spirit of liberalism and toward liberalism s high ideals, has now turned suddenly and violently backward. The guidance of reason and of understanding, of moral principle and of religious faith, has been shockingly and cruelly disslaced by the rule of brute force. Our literally stupendous achievements in literature, in philosophy, in the arts, in the sciences and in the comforts and conveniences of life count for nothing in the control of no national policy and of national conduct, and by far the major portion of the world is now under the rule of brutal compulsion. Such portion of the world as is not in that condition may soon be struggling for its life.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Life , World , Faith , Art

“The challenge is to understand the psyche of somebody like that. There is no true genius or revolutionary ideas, I don’t think, without some element of compulsiveness or madness or obsession, and that’s certainly indicative of Howard Hughes. Understanding his obsessive-compulsive disorder was really the key for me for opening up who this man was.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Idea , Understanding , Thinking , Madness

“Right or community of blood was not the bond of union between them, so much as interest or compulsion as the case may be.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book VII, 7.57-[1]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VII

Communication

“Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Tragedy and the Common Man (1949)
Context: I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.
Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.

“Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves (1931), pp. 39-40
Context: Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens.

Tree , Grass , Time

“You no longer feel the need or the compulsion to explain things anymore.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"A Changed Person", p. 96
Awareness (1992)
Context: It's only when you become love — in other words, when you have dropped your illusions and attachments — that you will "know." As you identify less and less with the "me," you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last! You no longer feel the need or the compulsion to explain things anymore. It's all right. What is there to be explained? And you don't feel the need or compulsion to apologize anymore. I'd much rather hear you say, "I've come awake," than hear you say, "I'm sorry." I'd much rather hear you say to me, "I've come awake since we last met; what I did to you won't happen again," than to hear you say, "I'm so sorry for what I did to you."

Feeling

“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts…That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused. That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Hurt , Imagination , Housing , Personality

“But, as I have told you, this Five Year Plan brought much suffering, and difficulties and dislocation. And people paid a terrible price willingly and accepted the sacrifices and sufferings for a few years in the hope of a better time afterwards; some paid the price unwillingly and only because of the compulsion of the Soviet Government. Among those who suffered most were the kulaks or richer peasants. With their great wealth and special influence, they did not fit into the new scheme of things. They were capitalistic elements which prevented the collective farms from developing on socialist lines. Often they opposed this collectivization, sometimes they entered the collectives to weaken them from inside or to make undue personal profit out of them. The Soviet Government came down heavily on them. The Government was also very hard on many middle-class people whom it suspected of espionage and sabotage on behalf of its enemies. Because of this, large numbers of engineers were punished and sent to gaol.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Time , Personality , Wealth , Suffering

“As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking. When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997)

Self-confidence , Thinking , Feeling

“Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Knowledge , Exercises

“How do our lives ravel out
into the no-wind, no-sound,
the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:
echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:
in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,
dead gestures of dolls.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

Dead

“Adrian! You Used compulsion on that guy. That…. I mean, it's….."

"Awesome? Yeah, I Know”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Guy

“The Element is about discovering your self, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform. You can't be yourself in a swarm.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“love is a mental illness, an obsessive-compulsive disorder romanticized!”

Eric Jerome Dickey (1961) American author

Source: Cheaters

Love

“I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

“We cannot avoid
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

"Power and Love" (1926)
Context: p> Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.We cannot avoid
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.</p

Love , World , Affliction

“… If I don't have twenty or thirty books right here, waiting to be read, I start jonesing. That's my compulsion.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Key of Knowledge

Books , Waiting , Reading

“She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.”

Jane Hamilton (1957) American novelist

Books , Reading

“Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Arcades (1630-1634), line 68
Source: The Complete Poetry

Lie , Music

“… most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People , Thinking

“You're so easy to tease. And yes, your friend is just fine. Well, except that he keeps putting all my things away and trying to clean up. Now I can't find anything. He's compulsive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Actually, I'd already briefed him, early this morning. Since we were up at six. Since, at six, the nurse had been overcome with the overwhelming compulsion to take Fang's temperature.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

“Culture is shared meaning. Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Changing Consciousness (1991)
Context: Culture is shared meaning. Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture. <!-- p. 185

“Unbelievable," I said. "First you wanted to hide her away to keep you alive. Now you actually want her out in the world to use her compulsion for your own psycho plans.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

World

“As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.”

Will Shortz (1952) American puzzle creator and editor

Nature

“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Motivational , Life , Heart

“My tendency to make up stories and lie compulsively for the sake of my own amusement takes up a good portion of my day and provides me with a peace of mind not easily attainable in this economic climate.”

Chelsea Handler book Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang

Source: Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang

Lie , Peace

“Without [the coup perpetrators] divulging the information they have, there can not really be any reconciliation. It will merely be a vehicle for them to escape justice as is the provision in the current Bill. There is no compulsion on them to come and tell the truth to the Commission about what actually happened, who were behind it, who were the key figures?”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

2 August 2005
Opposition to the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission

Truth , Justice

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Women , Fools , Art , Home

“He had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work—his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy—and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 3 (p. 82)

Love , Cars , Motivation , Nature

“Once efficiency is universally accepted as a rule, it becomes an inner compulsion and weighs like a sense of sin, simply because no one can ever be efficient enough, just as no one can ever be virtuous enough. And this new sense of sin only contributes further to the enervation of leisure, for the rich as well as the poor.The difficulty of carrying on a leisure-oriented tradition of culture in a work-oriented society is enough in itself to keep the present crisis in our culture unresolved.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"The Plight of Culture" (1953), pp. 31-32
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Sense , Universe

“[Nelson, to Annabelle] "The misery of the world," he says, reaching into himself to overcome her resistance. "That's what I kept thinking during my group this morning – the pity of everything, all of us, these confused souls trying so pathetically hard to break out of the fog – to see through our compulsions, our needs as they chew us up…"”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

World , Soul , Thinking

“Dear Brethern! Let us remove hatred and jealousy from our hearts…. The doors of penance of your return to the fold of your former real faith are wide open to let you in. Shed the burden put on your necks by force and under compulsion. Befriend the truth and help us in spreading the truth, because God helps those who help themselves.”

Pandit Lekh Ram (1858–1897) Hindu leader

Risala-i-Jihad, Treatise on Holy War, or the basis of the Mohammedan religion, 1892, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.108-9

God , Truth , Jealousy , Faith

“Thus the inertia of "progress" today leads swiftly downhill; while the attempt while the attempt to achieve stabilization by collective compulsion and social arrest likewise leads to the same destination--death. Only one road lies open to those who would remain human: the road of renewal. Each one of us must dedicate himself, at whatever effort, with whatever willing sacrifice, to such a transformation of himself and all teh groups and associations of in which he participates, as will lead to law and order, to peace and cooperation, to love and brotherhood, throughout the planet.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

CHALLENGE: Alternatives to Catastrophe
The Conduct Of Life (1951)

Love , Death , Peace , Law

“Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgastic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 11 "The Sex-Seekers".

Sex

“The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8 ("dragqueen", "dragqueens", & hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Men

“If reverence for personality, the principle of mutuality, active goodwill, and love toward God and man constitute the essence of high religion, then in many situations, in an imperfect world, compulsion becomes a religious obligation.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)

Love , God , World , Religion

“To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Vol. 2, bk. 7, ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Idea , Universe , Science

“The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith. The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its "unhallowed perversion" by a civil magistrate. Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminal offense to conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind-- a law which was consistently flouted by dissenting religious groups in England and which contributed to widespread persecutions of people like John Bunyan who persisted in holding "unlawful [religious] meetings... to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom...."”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in this country soon after the establishment of official religions in those colonies. It was in large part to get completely away from this sort of systematic religious persecution that the Founders brought into being our Nation, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights with its prohibition against any governmental establishment of religion.
Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

People , Books , Faith , Religion

“…but he distinctly remembered standing at the house door one summer morning in a passionate outburst of rebellion against going to school. Naturally his mother was the immediate victim of his rage; that is what mothers are for, and boys also; but in this case the boy had his mother at unfair disadvantage, for she was a guest, and had no means of enforcing obedience. Henry showed a certain tactical ability by refusing to start, and he met all efforts at compulsion by successful, though too vehement protest. He was in fair way to win, and was holding his own, with sufficient energy, at the bottom of the long staircase which led up to the door of the President's library, when the door opened, and the old man slowly came down. Putting on his hat, he took the boy's hand without a word, and walked with him, paralyzed by awe, up the road to the town. After the first moments of consternation at this interference in a domestic dispute, the boy reflected that an old gentleman close on eighty would never trouble himself to walk near a mile on a hot summer morning over a shadeless road to take a boy to school, and that it would be strange if a lad imbued with the passion of freedom could not find a corner to dodge around, somewhere before reaching the school door. Then and always, the boy insisted that this reasoning justified his apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his hand and depart.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

School , Way , Boy , Nature

“The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for … cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualisation that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful.”

B. Alan Wallace (1950) American author, translator, teacher, researcher, interpreter, and Buddhist practitioner

Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground up, Wisdom (1993).

Intelligence , Thinking , Time

“It is the general authority to undertake the establishment of religion through the revival of religious sciences, the establishment of the pillars of Islam, the organization of jihad and its related functions of maintenance of armies, financing the soldiers, and allocation of their rightful portions from the spoils of war, administration of justice, enforcement of [the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes (hudud)], elimination of injustice, and enjoining good and forbidding evil, to be exercised on behalf of the Prophet… It is no mercy to them to stop at intellectually establishing the truth of Religion to them. Rather, true mercy towards them is to compel them so that Faith finds a way to their minds despite themselves. It is like a bitter medicine administered to a sick man. Moreover, there can be no compulsion without eliminating those who are a source of great harm or aggression, or liquidating their force, and capturing their riches, so as to render them incapable of posing any challenge to Religion. Thus their followers and progeny are able to enter the faith with free and conscious submission… Jihad made it possible for the early followers of Islam from the Muhajirun and the Ansar to be instrumental in the entry of the Quraysh and the people around them into the fold of Islam. Subsequently, God destined that Mesopotamia and Syria be conquered at their hands. Later on it was through the Muslims of these areas that God made the empires of the Persians and Romans to be subdued. And again, it was through the Muslims of these newly conquered realms that God actualized the conquests of India, Turkey and Sudan. In this way, the benefits of jihad multiply incessantly, and it becomes, in that respect, similar to creating an endowment, building inns and other kinds of recurring charities.… Jihad is an exercise replete with tremendous benefits for the Muslim community, and it is the instrument of jihad alone that can bring about their victory.… The supremacy of his Religion over all other religions cannot be realized without jihad and the necessary preparation for it, including the procurement of its instruments. Therefore, if the Prophet’s followers abandon jihad and pursue the tails of cows [that is, become farmers] they will soon be overcome by disgrace, and the people of other religions will overpower them.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

People , Exercises , Way , God

“Reason can always disarm the irrational. If reason finds itself to be irrational, it can disarm it; and if one finds reason and discovers that eating animals is immoral, unnecessary, and done largely for superstitious reasons, then one is delivered from the compulsion to do it.”

Brigid Brophy (1929–1995) novelist, essayist

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), p. 82.

Animals

“I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having "too much" sex. At what point does a "healthy" amount become "too much"? There are, of course, those who suffer because their desire for sex has become compulsive; in their cases the drive (loneliness, guilt) is at fault, not the activity as such.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

San Francisco (p. 37).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Sex , Suffering , Loneliness

“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

Peace , Law , History , Motivation

“We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.”

Eugen Drewermann (1940) German psychologist and theologian

"Heil und Heilung - Theologie und Psychoanalyse," speech at a conference of therapists in Basel, Switzerland (1977-05-21)

God , Health

“Some see in this change a triumph of Nehru over Gandhi. They, of course, do not mean Nehru as a person for Nehru was merely a symbol and he represented, in his own way, a typical response, the response of a defeated nation trying to restore its self-respect and self-confidence through self-repudiation and identification with the ways of the victors. The approach was not altogether unjustified at one time. It had its compulsions and it had also a survival value for us. But its increasing influence can mean no good to us.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Way , Confidence , Change , Time

“He knew that in so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 10 (Orr)

“The scientist who considers himself absolutely "objective" and believes that he can free himself from the compulsion of the "merely" subjective should try — only in imagination of course — to kill in succession a lettuce, a fly, a frog, a guineapig, a cat, a dog, and finally a chimpanzee. He will then be aware how increasingly difficult murder becomes as the victim's level of organisation rises. The degree of inhibition against killing each one of these beings is a very precise measure for the considerably different values that we cannot help attributing to lower and higher forms of life. To any man who finds it equally easy to chop up a live dog and a live lettuce I would recommend suicide at his earliest convenience!”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

Life , Dogs , Imagination , Cats

“We in India, as a result of our planned economic development, not central planning, but mixed planning, mixed economy, we have experimented with, we have moved to a stage of partial maturity of the economy, when we needed new forms of management, new forms of, expression of the spirit of enterprise, so that the economy can move forward. The compulsion to liberalisation and globalisation arose from this. This is why we say that India's liberalisation is an irreversible process…. and, in a vast country, with millions of people and poverty, rampant, we cannot liberalise recklessly, in such a way that the balance of the society is upset and while some sections would flourish, make profits, the rest of the people would be left without employment and be helpless. Therefore, we have to have a balanced approach to liberalisation and also to globalisation.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

People , Way , Country

“To sum up [Trotsky wrote], "the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the Slate … The State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e. the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction" ([The Defence of Terrorism] p. 157). It would be difficult indeed to put the matter more plainly. The state of the proletarian dictatorship is depicted by Trotsky as a huge permanent concentration camp in which the government exercises absolute power over every aspect of the citizens’ lives and in particular decides how much work they shall do, of what kind and in what places. Individuals are nothing but labour units. Compulsion is universal, and any organization that is not part of the state must be its enemy, thus the enemy of the proletariat. All this, of course, is in the name of an ideal realm of freedom, the advent of which is expected after an indefinite lapse of historical time.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 512
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Life , Exercises , Freedom , Universe

“My principles require me merely to invite you to agree, while expecting the contrary. Missionaries do not make converts with such a message: millions are not mobilized by such tepid phrases. That is why the merely intellectual compulsion to regard human diversity and flux is unlikely to prevail against simpler systems of misunderstanding truly capable of altering the world in which we live.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

World

“While one should always be vigilant for traces of totalitarianism in any ideology or movement, the obsession with fascism in the anti-Hindu rhetoric of the secularists is not the product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political compulsions.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 ed): Art. Stephen Sondheim p. 408

Idea

“It belongs to journalism — and to the millennial complex from which so many journalists and journalist intellectuals suffer in our day — that each new phase of Modernist art should be hailed as the start of a whole new epoch in art, marking a decisive break with all the customs and conventions of the past. Each time, a kind of art is expected so unlike all previous kinds of art, and so free from norms of practice or taste, that everybody, regardless of how informed or uninformed he happens to be, can have his say about it. And each time, this expectation has been disappointed, as the phase of Modernist art in question finally takes its place in the intelligible continuity of taste and tradition.Nothing could be further from the authentic art of our time than the idea of a rupture of continuity. Art is — among other things — continuity, and unthinkable without it. Lacking the past of art, and the need and compulsion to maintain its standards of excellence, Modernist art would lack both substance and justification.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

1960s, Modernist Painting (1960)

Art , Disappointment , Intelligence , Idea

“Hindus learn to look at themselves through borrowed eyes. The two approaches, that of self-discovery and creative response and that of self-alienation and imitation, were both inherited from the immediate history of the freedom struggle, though they derive their strength from the deeper sources in the psyche…. For one, the problem is of helping the society to find its roots, for the other to remake it in the image of a chosen pattern. The one serves; the other manipulates…. [The first approach] once formed a powerful current, and the freedom struggle was waged under its auspices. But increasingly its hold became weak, and in our own times it seems to have lost altogether…. Some see in this change a triumph of Nehru over Gandhi…. Nehru represented, in his own way, the response of a defeated nation trying to restore its self-respect and self-confidence through self-repudiation and identification with the ways of the victors. The approach was not altogether unjustified at one time. It had its compulsions and it also had a survival value for us. But its increasing influence can mean no good to us. We, however, believe that deeper Indian nationalism, which is also in harmony with deeper internationalism, may be weak just now, but it has the seed-power and it is bound to come up again under propitious circumstances”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Cultural Self-Alienation and Some Problems Hinduism Faces, 1987, p. 4-5

Way , Confidence , History , Problem

“We arrest our inner creativity with external compulsions and irrelevant anxieties, at the mercy of constant interruptions by telephone and radio and insistent print, timing our lives to the movement of a production belt we do not control. At the same time, we give authority to the stomach, the muscles, the genitals--to animal reflexes that produce obedient consumers, whip-wielding man-trainers, slavish political subjects, push-button automatons.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

CHALLENGE: Diagnosis of Our Times
The Conduct Of Life (1951)

Time , Animals

“I can’t be twenty-two again. I can’t subject myself to the same compulsion that, at the time, appeared to me as freedom and gave me wings.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 17
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

Freedom , Appearance , Time

“There may be a kindness that is neurotic, if it develops out of unconscious compulsions, and a cruelty that is normal, if it is freely and consciously determined upon. So far as sainthood is determined by unconscious and uncontrolled motives, it is neurotic; so far as sinning, as usually understood, is determined by conscious and rational choice, it is normal.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Motivation

“Question: Paul says that no law is made for the just.
Answer: Just persons, by becoming so, conduct themselves more submissively than other people because they understand from within, in the source, what is proper outwardly for everyone, and they view all things accordingly. The reason that they are unfettered is that they do (freely) out of an attitude of detachment what ordinary people do under compulsion.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

People , Law , Understanding , Question

“Nor, on the other hand, are there any masculine charms [in Gabriele Münter's work] either: no 'sinewy brushwork', no heaps of paint, 'hurled on to the canvas'. The pictures are painted throughout with a delicately and correctly sensed measure of external strength, with not a trace of feminine or masculine coquetry in the 'making'. We could almost say that they are painted modestly; i. e. that they were inspired, not by a desire for outward display, but by a purely inward compulsion.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, 1913; in the introduction of an exhibition-catalog 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', Munich; as cited by , in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 120
1910 - 1915

Sense , Painting

“Secrecy is a compulsive reflex in this country. It strangles thought, delays scientific progress, and destroys integrity.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 7 (p. 105)

Country

“The main objection to the theory of pure visualization is our thesis that the non-Euclidean axioms can be visualized just as rigorously if we adjust the concept of congruence. This thesis is based on the discovery that the normative function of visualization is not of visual but of logical origin and that the intuitive acceptance of certain axioms is based on conditions from which they follow logically, and which have previously been smuggled into the images. The axiom that the straight line is the shortest distance is highly intuitive only because we have adapted the concept of straightness to the system of Eucidean concepts. It is therefore necessary merely to change these conditions to gain a correspondingly intuitive and clear insight into different sets of axioms; this recognition strikes at the root of the intuitive priority of Euclidean geometry. Our solution of the problem is a denial of pure visualization, inasmuch as it denies to visualization a special extralogical compulsion and points out the purely logical and nonintuitive origin of the normative function. Since it asserts, however, the possibility of a visual representation of all geometries, it could be understood as an extension of pure visualization to all geometries. In that case the predicate "pure" is but an empty addition, since it denotes only the difference between experienced and imagined pictures, and we shall therefore discard the term "pure visualization."”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

Instead we shall speak of the normative function of the thinking process, which can guide the pictorial elements of thinking into any logically permissible structure.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Imagination , Problem , Thinking , Change

“The classification of biodiversity is the job of taxonomists who, born as packrats and inspired by a compulsion to explore and collect the world's biological riches, will risk life and limb to solve the great puzzles of biogeography, ethnobotany, and evolution.”

Hugh Iltis (1925–2016) Czech-American botanist and environmentalist

1988)[Serendipity in the exploration of biodiversity, Biodiversity, National Academy Press, 98–105, https://books.google.com/books?id=MkUrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA98] (quote from p. 98

Life , World

“Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

L24
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

Search , Motivation

“I'm quite a compulsive person—I only worked this out recently—I'm compulsive, but I'm also very indecisive. I don't know what I want, but I know that I want it now.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Personality , Indecision

“The self-awareness that grows out of the habit of witnessing is nonjudgmental. I look at my actions, my feelings, my experience with soft and compassionate eyes, from a great distance as if I were God or a novelist. The chief rule of the witness is: Judge not. Do not identify with or against anything you observe. The witness must be amoral, a pure phenomenologist. The courtroom of civil conscience must be closed for a time. There is a time when the outlaw switches from contemplation to trans-moral action. But in order to stop the reactionary patterns of thought and behavior that make up the personality, there must be a prior time of inaction. As I gain skill as an objective and compassionate witness, my identity gradually shifts from my persona to my self. In place of the old compulsive, preprogrammed reactions, I find a growing ability to pause between the stimulus and the response. I cease being merely a biological creature who reacts automatically to steak and potatoes, the lure of immediate sex, or the invasion of my territory; I deliberate and choose what is most desirable. I am no longer captive either to my impulses or to the judgments made upon me by my society. In the newfound silence, I find the freedom to disengage from my old self-images and addictions.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 137

God , Sex , Behavior , Feeling

“A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories.”

Raymond Cattell (1905–1998) British-American psychologist

Raymond Cattell (1987), Intelligence: Its Structure, Growth and Action. p. 61

Law , Science , Time

“The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. … It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. … Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 142 (1972 edition)

Lie , Way , Soul

“If I like chocolate it won't surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I've got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you'd think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money — money is all they think about — they're all nuts.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

On Fresh Air with Terry Gross, promoting Fierce Creatures, which Cleese says is a satire about Rupert Murdoch's greed. (1997)

Money , Guy , Thinking

“I think the enemy is here before us, too. But I think we know the forms and faces of the enemy, and in the knowledge that we know him, and shall meet him, and eventually must conquer him is also our living hope. I think the enemy is here before us with a thousand faces, but I think we know that all his faces wear one mask. I think the enemy is single selfishness and compulsive greed. I think the enemy is blind, but has the brutal power of his blind grab. I do not think the enemy was born yesterday, or that he grew to manhood forty years ago, or that he suffered sickness and collapse in 1929, or that we began without the enemy, and that our vision faltered, that we lost the way, and suddenly were in his camp. I think the enemy is old as Time, and evil as Hell, and that he has been here with us from the beginning. I think he stole our earth from us, destroyed our wealth, and ravaged and despoiled our land. I think he took our people and enslaved them, that he polluted the fountains of our life, took unto himself the rarest treasures of our own possession, took our bread and left us with a crust, and, not content, for the nature of the enemy is insatiate--tried finally to take from us the crust.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Book VII, Ch. 48: Credo
You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

Life , People , Hope , Way

“If certain types and degrees of compulsion represent true expressions of brotherly affection, coercion may ennoble personality. If the killing of a brother is an act which in its very essence is alien to and destructive of the family bond, then it is ethically unjustifiable.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)

Family , Personality

“…the principle of three acres and a cow, on which the election of 1885 was fought. The principle was that the local authority was to have power to acquire land by compulsion for the benefit of the community, in letting it out or otherwise disposing of it to individuals…It was on this proposal that the great charge of Socialism was made; but we were all Socialists now.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

Speech on the Labourers' Allotments Bill (11 August, 1887).
'House Of Commons, Thursday, Aug. 11', The Times (12 August, 1887), p. 6.
Harcourt said "we are all Socialists now" but The Times reported his speech in past tense.

Communication

“Nothing whatever is to be gained by driving the timorous and weak by lies or compulsion into pain which they will resent and responsibility which they will evade. Everything is to be gained by training a woman in knowledge, courage, and physical strength, and leaving it then to her own instinct and her mind to tell her that to create new human beings is worth the discomfort and the suffering she must necessarily undergo. Those in whom the courage to create survives when choice is free and all the facts are known are those best fitted to bring children into the world, and breed in them eagerness and intrepidity. The others will only pass on fear and distaste for life from which individuals and the community suffer far too much already.”

Dora Russell book Hypatia

Hypatia (1925), Ch. 4

Life , Pain , Children , World

“For the student of visionary art the interesting fact is that an image comes first and takes up residence in the mind long before the artist has any notion why it is there or what it means. Whether visions come from some great reservoir of symbolic images which are eternally there (and if one examines the recurrence of images in history this proposition is not quite as crazy as it sounds) or whether they are due to buried memories, their obsessive power over an artist's mind, and their clear, compulsive emergence in his work depends on a mental condition that can come and go. When, for some reason, they no longer present themselves to the mind's eye, alive or clamoring to be born, the visionary artist has a hard time — dark days. This is particularly true if he has lost the habit of feeding his mind on the observation of nature.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 6: Blake

Art , History , Nature , Memory

“Compulsion means force; there must be a policeman to see that the individual does not follow his own inclinations. But policemen must live. Since they do not produce a thing by which they can live, others must support them. Hence, the planners must have the means of getting at the production of the very people who are to be improved by the policeman. That means taxes, and the more taxes the greater the number of enforcement agents, and therefore the more comprehensive the plan. No plan can be bigger than its bureaucracy. The income tax is the ideal instrument for the planner.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 54

People , Support

“Positivism, with its principle that ‘a law is a law’, has in fact rendered the German legal profession defenceless against statutes that are arbitrary and criminal. Positivism is, moreover, in and of itself wholly incapable of establishing the validity of statutes. It claims to have proved the validity of a statute simply by showing that the statute had sufficient power behind it to prevail. But while power may indeed serve as a basis for the ‘must’ of compulsion, it never serves as a basis for the ‘ought’ of obligation or for legal validity. Obligation and legal validity must be based, rather, on a value inherent in the statute.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law" (1946)

Law

“Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

from "Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the end of the Millennium: An interview with Peter Seewald," by Ratzinger, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997
1990s