Quotes about individual

page 40

Administration, A Foundation of Government (1940)

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

“Search led to family, diary and a cause,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas), April 22, 2007.
Attributed

The Monthly Magazine

[Speech given by The Princess of Wales on women and mental health (1 June 1993)]

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 95.

In 1931, as quoted in Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy https://books.google.com/books?id=kp3p_sIk8h8C&pg=PA303 (1990), by Avraham Barkai, pp. 26–27
1930s

Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), p. 264

Press statement (3 February 1931)

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 8, Centennial summer, p. 196

Upon The Mother Of The Gods (c. 362-363)

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 2. A Busy World (pp. 30-31)

Richard Long, ‎British Council (1994). Richard Long: São Paulo Bienal 1994.
1990s

"Loyalty and Sedition," essay published in The Advertiser (1748) http://thingsabove.freerovin.com/samadams.htm, later printed in The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams, Volume 1 (1865), by William Vincent Wells

For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (1973)

Source: Models of Mental Illness (1984), p. 245

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Trial of the Earl of Thanet, and others (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 939.

Memoirs

1991; 124
The Social Construction of Reality, 1966

Debts 2. "An Anglo-Irishman In China: J.C. O’G. Anderson" (1998;2005)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Perry Anderson / Quotes / Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Debts 2. "An Anglo-Irishman In China, J.C. O’G. Anderson" (1998;2005)
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005)

Source: The Power Elite (1956), P. 270-272; key shifts in power relations which Mills contends have brought us to the current state.

Letter to William Findley, Washington (21 March 1801); published in Thomas Jefferson - A chronology of his thoughts (2002) by Jerry Holmes, p. 175 http://books.google.de/books?id=iOHNKGJGo94C&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=It+is+rare+that+the+public+sentiment+decides+immorally+or+unwisely,+and+the+individual+who+differs+from+it+ought+to+distrust+and+examine+well+his+own+opinion&source=bl&ots=lUHnglNeTO&sig=OfEnoz8qmlxJq-5jIEvC8dD1hOk&hl=de&sa=X&ei=V_zAUPqeCsjGtAaZ-YGYDQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=It%20is%20rare%20that%20the%20public%20sentiment%20decides%20immorally%20or%20unwisely%2C%20and%20the%20individual%20who%20differs%20from%20it%20ought%20to%20distrust%20and%20examine%20well%20his%20own%20opinion&f=false
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

Moses and Monotheism (1938)
1930s

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

United States v. Di Re (1947).
Judicial opinions

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), II

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.282

As quoted in European Civilization and Politics Since 1815 (1938) by Erik Achorn, p. 723. amd in his obituary in The New York Times (19 April 1955)
Variant translation: I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
As quoted in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 186
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)

Source: "The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields," 1983, p. 148

Source: The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979), p. 462-463

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Section I, "Of the First Principles of Government, and the different kinds of Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)

Pt. I, Bk. VII, ch. 4.
1830s, The French Revolution. A History (1837)

"Monastic Interlude" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/4.htm
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

1949 - 1958, Speech to the Penguins' (1949)

Ibid.
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

Hansard, House of Commons, 6th Series, vol. 45, col. 316.
Maiden speech as MP for Sedgefield, 6 July 1983.
1980s

Source: "What I Believe" (1930), pp. 7-8

Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 253–4.

Speech to the third annual banquet of the Kingston and District Working Men's Conservative Association (13 June, 1883), quoted in 'The Marquis Of Salisbury At Kingston', The Times (14 June 1883), p. 7
1880s

Paul Kurtz (1983) In defense of secular humanism, p. 16

Source: The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter I

Source: The Way Toward Health (1997), p. 265

Preface.
Advances in Enterprise Engineering II (2009)

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Three, Communication Today: What's New?, p. 94

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Source: Foundations of fuzzy reasoning (1976), p. 623.

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 139

Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction the Bible in Context (2001)

Introduction to The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death (2006).

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (1950)

Silence is a Commons (1982)

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 295; as cited by Pol, Eduardo, and Peter Carroll.

p 258-259
Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens (1994)

1911 - 1914, The 'Savages' of Germany' (1912)

Vernon L. Smith, in "Reflections on Human Action after 50 years", in Cato Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2. (Fall 1999).

Roberts v. Gwyrfai District Council (1899), L. R. 2 C. D. 614.

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Conclusion

Source: Participant observer, 1994, p. 38; As cited in: Ickis (2014)

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2016/04/14/the-story-of-traceroute-about.html

Book III, Chapter 5, p. 405
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Excerpts from an address to the Commonwealth Workshop in Nadi, 29 August 2005

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
Context: War being established as a recognized institution to be resorted to when Governments quarrel, the people are more or less prepared. They quite willingly delude themselves in order to justify their own actions. They are anxious to find an excuse for displaying their patriotism, or they are disposed to seize the opportunity for the excitement and new life of adventure which war opens out to them. So there is a sort of national wink, everyone goes forward, and the individual, in his turn, takes up lying as a patriotic duty. In the low standard of morality which prevails in war-time, such a practice appears almost innocent.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.
In fact, it is certain that in proportion as the human mind frees itself from ideas inculcated by minorities of priests, military chiefs and judges, all striving to establish their domination, and of scientists paid to perpetuate it, a conception of society arises, in which conception there is no longer room for those dominating minorities. A society entering into possession of the social capital accumulated by the labor of preceding generations, organizing itself so as to make use of this capital in the interests of all, and constituting itself without reconstituting the power of the ruling minorities. It comprises in its midst an infinite variety of capacities, temperaments and individual energies: it excludes none. It even calls for struggles and contentions; because we know that periods of contests, so long as they were freely fought out, without the weight of constituted authority being thrown on the one side of the balance, were periods when human genius took its mightiest flight and achieved the greatest aims. Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association.
It seeks the most complete development of individuality combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms, which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all.

"The Individual in the Animal Kingdom" (1912); quoted in From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences (1992) by Connie Barlow, Ch. 6 "Blurred Bounds of Individuality" <!-- Barlow in quoting Huxley also notes that modern science has revealed that clone-propagating blueberries in an Appalachian mountaintop and Aspens of the Rockies may have root-stocks ten or fifteen thousand years old. -->
Context: In the actual duration of his life, the individual ranges from the bacterium's hour to the the big tree's five thousand years. Man in this again stands at the pinnacle of individuality — not in mere length of days, but in having found a means to perpetuate a part of himself in spite of death.
By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power. Once more the upward progress of terrestrial life towards individuality has found apparently insurmountable obstacles, gross material difficulties before it, but once more through consciousness it finds wings, and, laughing at matter, flies over lightly where it could not climb.
To such an individuality, one that can thus transcend the limits of its substance, the name Personality is commonly given. Man alone possesses true personality, though there is as it were an aspiration towards it visible among the higher vertebrates, stirring their placid automatism with airs of consciousness.

Context: Socially, the crisis is putting the European model of integration to the test. Instead of being united in diversity, will Europe now be united against diversity? Instead of integration without assimilation, will Europe now prefer integration through assimilation? The Arab philosopher Averroes wrote that “ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to violence.” Today in Europe, violence instigated by individuals and groups who fear diversity is spreading

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.

The Heart of Matter (1950)
Context: We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole.

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.
The history of persecution is a history of endeavours to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the martyrs are justified.
Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. The man is all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, — What boots it to do well? there is one event to good and evil; if I gain any good, I must pay for it; if I lose any good, I gain some other; all actions are indifferent.
There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same.

An Idealist View of Life (1929)
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Context: Feeling the unity of himself and the universe, the man who lives in spirit is no more a separate and self-centered individual but a vehicle of the universal spirit. [Like the artist, the moral hero does not turn his back on the world. Instead], He throws himself on the world and lives for its redemption, possessed as he is with an unshakable sense of optimism and an unlimited faith in the powers of the soul.

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

Dedication
Calculated Risk (1950)

"The Magic of Science" in Imperial Oil Review (Spring, 1994) http://sites.utoronto.ca/jpolanyi/public_affairs/public_affairs4f.html.
Context: It is not the laws of physics that make science possible but the unprovable proposition that there exists a grand design underlying the physical world. And not just any old "grand design" but one that is accessible to the limited senses and modest reasoning powers of the species to which we belong. Scientists subscribe with such conviction to this article of faith that they are willing to commit a lifetime to the pursuit of scientific discovery. It is hardly surprising that an activity so magical is also undefinable. Science is what scientists do. And what they do is look around themselves for messages written in the sky, the earth, the oceans and all living things – messages that tell of the unity of creation. These messages have been there – unseen, though at times written in letters miles high – since the dawn of history. But we have just passed through an epoch in which, quite suddenly, scientists seem to have learnt speed reading. Discoveries have been coming at an unprecedented pace. In the wake of such a period it is common to consider that we may be approaching the point where all that is readable in nature will have been read. We should be skeptical of such claims. Success in reading some messages brings with it a temporary blindness to others. We forget that between the words written in black in nature's book there are likely to be messages of equal importance written in white. It is a truism that success in science comes to the individuals who ask the right questions.

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: Human potentialities constitute the world's greatest resource, but at the moment only a tiny fraction of them is being realized. The possibility of tapping and directing these vast resources of human possibility provide the religion of the future with a powerful long-term motive. An equally powerful short-term motive is to ensure the fullest possible development and flowering of individual personalities. In developing a full, deep and rich personality the individual ceases to be a mere cog or cipher, and makes his own particular contribution to evolutionary fulfilment.

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Context: The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 53

"There is no free will, but you have a choice! (And the role of memes in choice-creation)" in Handbags and Lingo (3 November 2013) http://anand.memesyslab.com/2013/11/there-is-no-free-will-but-you-have.html<!-- INKTalks -->
Context: The promise of survival beyond individual death or dispersion appeals to the most primal driving force of existence. Promises of transcendence have evolved out of the thriving desire to ward off the inevitable threat of individual death. Most systems propose a more or less perfect immortality – one where memories, hopes, desires, knowledge and even experiences survive the death of the physical body. An engagement and acceptance of this meme makes death particularly irrelevant. The upholding of the promise at the cost of individual sacrifice becomes acceptable. Individual sacrifices even become necessary in validating the promise.

The Individual and the World
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?
Context: There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men’s good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men’s thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.

1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: I think there is a difference between the human being and the individual. The individual is a local entity, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular culture, particular society, particular religion. The human being is not a local entity. He is everywhere. If the individual merely acts in a particular corner of the vast field of life, then his action is totally unrelated to the whole. So one has to bear in mind that we are talking of the whole not the part, because in the greater the lesser is, but in the lesser the greater is not. The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world.

The World's Religions (1991)
Context: He [Jesus] could have been that [a healer and exorcist]--indeed, he could have been "the most extraordinary figure in … the stream of Jewish charismatic healers," as the same New Testament scholar goes on to say--without attracting more than local attention. What made him outlive his time and place was the way he used the Spirit that coursed though him not just to heal individuals but -- this was his aspiration -- to heal humanity, beginning with his own people.

1960s, Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)
Context: In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 117.
1870s
Context: [My sixth principle is that] the foreign policy of England should always be inspired by the love of freedom. There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.

Stay Alive All Your Life (1957), Epigram, Ch. 1 : The Magnificent Power of Belief http://www.ebookwise.com/ebooks/b55844/Stay-Alive-All-Your-Life/Dr-Norman-Vincent-Peale/?si=43
Stay Alive All Your Life (1957)
Context: Every individual forms his own estimate of himself and that basic estimate goes far toward determining what he becomes. You can do no more than you believe you can. You can be no more than you believe you are. Belief stimulates power within yourself. Have faith in faith. Don't be afraid to trust faith.

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)
Context: If Americans were not always aware that they were rich men individually, they were at all events well instructed, by old-world visitors who came to observe them with a certain air of condescension, that collectively at least their material prosperity was a thing to be envied even by more advanced and more civilized peoples. Therefore any man called upon to pay a penny tax and finding his pocket bare might take a decent pride in the fact, which none need doubt since foreigners like Peter Kalm found it so, that "the English colonies in this part of the world have increased so much in... their riches, that they almost vie with old England."

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)
Context: A special consideration suggests the value of a development of national interest in recreation and sports. There is no better common denominator of a people. In the case of a people which represents many nations, cultures and races, as does our own, a unification of interests and ideals in recreations is bound to wield a telling influence for solidarity of the entire population. No more truly democratic force can be set off against the tendency to class and caste than the democracy of individual parts and prowess in sport.

East of Eden (1952)
Context: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Rolling Stone (30 November 1989) https://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&pg=PA347&lpg=PA347&dq=%22the+annoying+things+about+believing+in+free+will+and+individual+responsibility%22&source=bl&ots=87tHwdgxHT&sig=t-cX3HtpzKcKAd5GztMu4YkLLgM&hl=en&ei=Jl7OSvzgFpCMtgemntGEBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22the%20annoying%20things%20about%20believing%20in%20free%20will%20and%20individual%20responsibility%22&f=false
Context: One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Context: Who are the inventors of Tlön? The plural is inevitable, because the hypothesis of a lone inventor — an infinite Leibniz laboring away darkly and modestly — has been unanimously discounted. It is conjectured that this brave new world is the work of a secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebraists, moralists, painters, geometers... directed by an obscure man of genius. Individuals mastering these diverse disciplines are abundant, but not so those capable of inventiveness and less so those capable of subordinating that inventiveness to a rigorous and systematic plan. This plan is so vast that each writer's contribution is infinitesimal. At first it was believed that Tlön was a mere chaos, and irresponsible license of the imagination; now it is known that it is a cosmos and that the intimate laws which govern it have been formulated, at least provisionally. Let it suffice for me to recall that the apparent contradictions of the Eleventh Volume are the fundamental basis for the proof that the other volumes exist, so lucid and exact is the order observed in it.

Source: The Visitor (2002), Ch. 44 : the visitor
Context: "This place is a godland, you may call me god. Small g, for I am not proud. We are a race evolving in this Creation to serve the Maker of it. We act as temporary deities during the childhood of individual peoples and planets. I was the midwife who brought forth this world, who stirred the primordial ooze, and noted the life that crawled up from the sea. Our race is not unlike yours, but I am very old, and you are still very young."
"We come and go. I came to teach your people language. I raised up oracles, whispered to soothsayers, wove bright visions for sorcerers, and spoke marvels to your alchemists. I came again to raise up prophets in the the Real One's name: Bruno, Galileo, Newton, Fermi..."
The doctor interrupted, "The Real One? Who?"
"The Being whom I worship. The Ultimate who stands apart from time. The Deity some men think they are addressing when they pray with words. The Real One doesn't even perceive words. If IT did, imagine what IT would have to listen to! The Real One sees only the pattern of what is, where it begins and where it comes to rest. The only prayer IT perceives is action. … Only actions enter the pattern the Real One sees. What is. What was done. IT perceives neither intentions nor remorse."

The Origins of Art (1966)
Other Quotes
Context: What I am searching for... is some formula that would combine individual initiative with universal values, and that combination would give us a truly organic form. Form, which we discover in nature by analysis, is obstinately mathematical in its manifestations—which is to say that creation in art requires thought and deliberation. But this is not to say that form can be reduced to a formula. In every work of art it must be re-created, but that too is true of every work of nature. Art differs from nature not in its organic form, but in its human origins: in the fact that it is not God or a machine that makes a work of art, but an individual with his instincts and intuitions, with his sensibility and his mind, searching relentlessly for the perfection that is neither in mind nor in nature, but in the unknown. I do not mean this in an other-worldly sense, only that the form of the flower is unknown to the seed.

What Is Anarchism? (1929), Ch. 26: "Preparation" http://libcom.org/library/what-is-anarchism-alexander-berkman-26
Context: If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence.

Letter to G. H. Lewes, 6 November 1847
Context: You advise me, too, not to stray far from the ground of experience, as I become weak when I enter the region of fiction; and you say, "real experience is perennially interesting, and to all men."I feel that this also is true; but, dear Sir, is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?

"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm
Context: Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very "uniqueness," "separateness" and "differentiation" make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.