Quotes about recognition
page 5

George Steiner photo

“What lies beyond man's word is eloquent of God. That is the joyously defeated recognition expressed in the poems of St. John of the Cross and of the mystic tradition.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Silence and the Poet" (1966).
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Ian McEwan photo

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin. It is much more likely, of course, that even in small states socialism will not be achieved without civil war, and for that reason the only programme of international Social-Democracy must be recognition of civil war, though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" (August - October 1916) http://search.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/carimarx/6.htm Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 28-76 http://www.jstor.org/pss/3516954
1910s

“Parsi culture is also an alien culture, but alien in name only, for, tolerant from the first, it has got blended with Indian culture almost beyond recognition.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Source: Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990), p.28.

Nelson Mandela photo
Charles Babbage photo

“But a much graver charge attaches itself, if not to our clergy, certainly to those who have the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage. The richest Church in the world maintains that its funds are quite insufficient for the purposes of religion and that our working clergy are ill-paid, and church accommodation insufficient. It calls therefore upon the nation to endow it with larger funds, and yet, while reluctant to sacrifice its own superfluities, it approves of its rich sinecures being given to reward, — not the professional service of its indefatigable parochial clergy, but those of its members who, having devoted the greater part of their time to scientific researches, have political or private interest enough to obtain such advancement. But this mode of rewarding merit is neither creditable to the Church nor advantageous to science. It tempts into the Church talents which some of its distinguished members maintain to be naturally of a disqualifying, if not of an antagonistic nature to the pursuits of religion; whilst, on the other hand, it makes a most unjust and arbitrary distinction amongst men of science themselves. It precludes those who cannot conscientiously subscribe to Articles, at once conflicting and incomprehensible, from the acquisition of that preferment and that position in society, which thus in many cases, must be conferred on less scrupulous, and certainly less distinguished inquirers into the works of nature. As the honorary distinctions of orders of knight hood are not usually bestowed on the clerical profession, its members generally profess to entertain a great contempt for them, and pronounce them unfit for the recognition of scientific merit.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225-226

Francis Escudero photo
Edward Hopper photo

“Recognition does not mean so much, you never get it when you need it.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

2 Quotes in 'The Silent Witness', Time, December 24, 1956
1941 - 1967

Margaret Mead photo
Colin Wilson photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Herbert Marcuse photo

“In the most advanced areas of this civilization, the social controls have been introjected to the point where even individual protest is affected at its roots. The intellectual and emotional refusal “to go along” appears neurotic and impotent. This is the socio-psychological aspect of the political event that marks the contemporary period: the passing of the historical forces which, at the preceding stage of industrial society, seemed to represent the possibility of new forms of existence. But the term “introjection” perhaps no longer describes the way in which the individual by himself reproduces and perpetuates the external controls exercised by his society. Introjection suggests a variety of relatively spontaneous processes by which a Self (Ego) transposes the “outer” into the “inner.” Thus introjection implies the existence of an inner dimension distinguished from and even antagonistic to the external exigencies—an individual consciousness and an individual unconscious apart from public opinion and behavior. The idea of “inner freedom” here has its reality: it designates the private space in which man may become and remain “himself.” Today this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and industrial psychology has long since ceased to be confined to the factory. The manifold processes of introjection seem to be ossified in almost mechanical reactions. The result is, not adjustment but mimesis: an immediate identification of the individual with his society and, through it, with the society as a whole. This immediate, automatic identification (which may have been characteristic of primitive forms of association) reappears in high industrial civilization; its new “immediacy,” however, is the product of a sophisticated, scientific management and organization. In this process, the “inner” dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of negative thinking—the critical power of Reason—is at home, is the ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition. The impact of progress turns Reason into submission to the facts of life, and to the dynamic capability of producing more and bigger facts of the same sort of life. The efficiency of the system blunts the individuals' recognition that it contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of the whole. If the individuals find themselves in the things which shape their life, they do so, not by giving, but by accepting the law of things—not the law of physics but the law of their society.”

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 9-11

Franz von Papen photo

“Allow me to say how manly and humanly great of you I think this is. Your courageous and firm intervention have met with nothing but recognition throughout the entire world. I congratulate you for all you have given anew to the German nation by crushing the intended second revolution.”

Franz von Papen (1879–1969) German chancellor

Letter sent to Adolf Hitler praising his firm action against the Sturm Abteilung on the Night of the Long Knives (12 July 1934). Quoted in "Nazi conspiracy and aggression" - Page 940 - 1946.
1940s

George Holmes Howison photo
Báb photo
Ariel Sharon photo

“I am for lasting peace… United, I believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Ariel Sharon. "I an for lasting peace." at New York Post Forum, November 13, 2000, cited at Freeman.org http://www.freeman.org/m_online/dec00/sharon.htm, November 14, 2000.
2000s

Madhuri Dixit photo

“It's so ironical. When you finally achieve recognition, you hide behind dark glasses.”

Madhuri Dixit (1967) Indian actress

Quote, When personality comes first.....

Narada Maha Thera photo
C. N. R. Rao photo

“I feel basic science is getting its due now. I used to say earlier that Dr Homi Bhabha should get this honour and also some other eminent researchers. Scientists work very, very had but rarely get recognition. I have been working for 62 years. I was 17 when I started my research. I am going to be 80 soon.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Quoted in CNR Rao: Bharat finds a jewel in science, 17 November 2013, 22 December 2013, Deccan Chronicle http://www.deccanchronicle.com/131117/news-current-affairs/article/cnr-rao-bharat-finds-jewel-science,

George Henry Lewes photo
James Branch Cabell photo
Ludwig Feuerbach photo
Henry Hazlitt photo

“You can teach the writing of verse.. like prose.. an instrument.. and the recognition of true poetry. The rest, writers must teach them selves.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Interview with J D McCarthy 'The Art of Poetry' no 35 Fall 1985

El Lissitsky photo

“For us [the young artists in Vitebsk, before 1920] Suprematism did not signify the recognition of an absolute form which was part of an already completed universal system, on the contrary; here stood revealed for the first time in all its purity the clear sign and plan for a definite new world never before experienced - a world which issues forth from our inner being and which is only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the square [ Malevich's Black and Red Square ] of suprematism became a beacon.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

Quote from Lissitzky's essay of 1920, 'Suprematism in World Reconstruction'; as quoted by Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, in El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, trans. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1968), p. 327
1915 - 1925

Linda McQuaig photo
Fritjof Capra photo

“He had come there dissatisfied with his work, even though his multi-kinetic work was admired and winning him professional recognition. However, at that moment, other ideas were gestating and he wanted to add what he called a "fifth dimension" to his art - that of artificial intelligence. […] : [At the colony, ] he was able to turn his thoughts inward, hoping to discover the new methods and direction that would more deeply satisfy his creative needs. It was at this point, while watching the motions and patterns of sun on leaves in the New Hampshire woods one morning, that Tsai finally achieved the revelatory breakthrough that changed his art and liberated his creative energies. As he put it, he wanted to create "natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, with intelligence," and he found his solution in an unlikely combination of natural phenomenon, the precedent of Gabo's singular (and unrepeated) kinetic sculpture, and the new resource of contemporary analog and digital technology. Speaking of this moment of revelation, Tsai said that he had quite deliberately turned himself into "a sort of plant": facing his chair into the sunshine in the morning, he turned his body in stages throughout the day, mulling over ways of make an "art that presented the observer with natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, and art that could convey the awe I felt while watching sunbeams shimmer through forest leaves." But a work that would "shimmer" simply did not do enough either for the artist or viewer, Tsai concluded. It must also respond in some way to the observer; it would have to work on a new feedback principle and actually engage the observer directly. In short, a cybernetic sculpture was required. To create such radically participatory works, he understood, would require that he draw on his engineering skills rather than suppress them, as he had been trying to do in his period of oil painting.”

Sam Hunter (1923–2014) American art historian

Source: The Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, 1989, p. 67

Charlie Beck photo

“I think this is a department that reflects the city and reflects it not only in the makeup of the personnel — which is the most diverse department in the city by far — but also in the diversity of our thought and the recognition that policing is a very complicated social contract with the people that live in this city, and that social contract requires action on both parts.”

Charlie Beck (1953) Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department

Quoted in: December 5, 2014, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck earns good reviews; tough challenges lie ahead, Los Angeles Daily News, August 9, 2014, Brenda Gazzar http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140809/lapd-chief-charlie-beck-earns-good-reviews-tough-challenges-lie-ahead,

Francisco De Goya photo

“I tell you that I have nothing more to wish for. They were extremely pleased with my pictures, and expressed great satisfaction not only the King, but the Prince as well. Neither I nor my works deserve such recognition.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, early Jan. 1779 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3915977 and https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Francisco_de_Goya_-_Portrait_of_Mart%C3%ADn_Zapater_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 110
Early in January, 1779, Goya was presented to the Spanish King and the heir apparent, and kissed hands. They appreciated his pictures (cartoons), Goya made as designs for the royal tapestry factory, to cover the huge walls of the king's palace https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Palacio_Real_de_Madrid
1770s

Herman Melville photo

“Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Amitabh Bachchan photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“I believe Love is the most courageous act of which a human being is capable. The word courage even stems from the root word “heart” (coeur). Scientifically speaking, it is quantifiable only by recognition of its quality.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Space: What love's got to do with it - The Space Review (2004)

Leo Tolstoy photo

“The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words.”

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III
Context: The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life — for home use, as it were — but that in public life all forms of violence — such as imprisonment, executions, and wars — might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.

Karl Barth photo

“The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History.”

The Epistle to the Romans (1918; 1921)
Context: The Resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God, and the apprehending of God in Jesus. The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History. In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it. And, precisely because it does not touch it, it touches it as its frontier — as the new world.<!-- p. 29

John Stuart Mill photo

“The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

""Civilization,"" London and Westminster Review (April 1836)
Context: The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. ¶ The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers. We say this, not because we think opinions unimportant, but because of the immense importance which we attach to them; for in proportion to the degree of intellectual power and love of truth which we succeed in creating, is the certainty that (whatever may happen in any one particular instance) in the aggregate of instances true opinions will be the result; and intellectual power and practical love of truth are alike impossible where the reasoner is shown his conclusions, and informed beforehand that he is expected to arrive at them.

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo

“As the number of the sides increases, a Polygon approximates to a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example three or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather, it WOULD be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference.”

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 11. Concerning our Priests
Context: p>With us, our Priests are Administrators of all Business, Art, and Science; Directors of Trade, Commerce, Generalship, Architecture, Engineering, Education, Statesmanship, Legislature, Morality, Theology; doing nothing themselves, they are the Causes of everything worth doing, that is done by others.Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemed a Circle, yet among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really a Circle, but only a Polygon with a very large number of very small sides. As the number of the sides increases, a Polygon approximates to a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example three or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather, it WOULD be difficult: for, as I have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to FEEL a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his Perimeter or Circumference.</p

John Danforth photo
Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (20 November 1872)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.

Henri Nouwen photo

“It is the unceasing recognition that God is wherever we are, always inviting us to come closer and to celebrate the divine gift of being alive.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Source: With Open Hands (1972)
Context: Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you freedom to go and to stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday mornings or mealtimes. Praying is living. It is eating and drinking, action and rest, teaching and learning, playing and working. Praying pervades every aspect of our lives. It is the unceasing recognition that God is wherever we are, always inviting us to come closer and to celebrate the divine gift of being alive.

Jonas Salk photo

“Now, some people might look at something and let it go by, because they don't recognize the pattern and the significance. It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: Now, some people might look at something and let it go by, because they don't recognize the pattern and the significance. It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter. It's like a journey. It's like finding the paths that will allow you to go forward, or that path that has a block that tells you to start over again or do something else.

“Once you've achieved recognition in some area, and no longer have as much interest in it as you used to, go into a different community focused on a different topic, and start over from a low-status (or at least not very high status) position.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cgrvvp9QzjiFuYwLi/high-status-and-stupidity-why#64QSdqdMekvGrpuaH on LessWrong, January 2010
Context: One solution [to the problem that high status might cause stupidity] that might work (and I think has worked for me, although I didn't consciously choose it) is to periodically start over. Once you've achieved recognition in some area, and no longer have as much interest in it as you used to, go into a different community focused on a different topic, and start over from a low-status (or at least not very high status) position.

“To say that Jesus and St. Paul recognize the function of the state is not to say that they command the Christian to participate in war when ordered to do so by the ruler of the nation; any more than their recognition of the state meant that they sanctioned human slavery, polygamy, extortion and the other evil practices which were approved by the”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 69-70
Context: None of us believes that rulers are infallible or that their commands should constitute our highest standard of right and wrong. Quite apart from the belief of the ruler, the method of war is either Christian or un-Christian, and his command does not determine whether our participation in it is moral or immoral. Therefore, the Christian citizen must come to his decision on a basis of the spirit and teaching of Jesus, quite independently of the command of the ruler. To say that Jesus and St. Paul recognize the function of the state is not to say that they command the Christian to participate in war when ordered to do so by the ruler of the nation; any more than their recognition of the state meant that they sanctioned human slavery, polygamy, extortion and the other evil practices which were approved by the [Roman] state.

José Martí photo

“Peace demands of Nature the recognition of human rights”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

My Race (1893)
Context: What right do white racist, who believe their race is superior, have for complaining about black racists, who see something special in their own race? What right do black racists, who see a special character in their race, have for complaining about white racists? White men who think their race makes them superior to black men admit the idea of racial difference and authorize and initiate black racists. Black men who proclaim their race — when what they are really proclaiming is the spiritual identity that distinguishes one ethnic group from another — authorize and incite white racists. Peace demands of Nature the recognition of human rights; discrimination is contrary to Nature and to the enemy of peace. Whites who isolate themselves also isolate Negroes. Negroes who isolate themselves incite and isolate whites.

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)
Context: There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values — offers food to some need which we have starved.

Karl Barth photo

“The relation between us and God, between this world and His world presses for recognition, but the line of intersection is not self-evident.”

The Epistle to the Romans (1918; 1921)
Context: The known plane is God's creation, fallen out of its union with Him, and therefore the world of the flesh needing redemption, the world of men, and of time, and of things — our world. This known plane is intersected by another plane that is unknown — the world of the Father, of the Primal Creation, and of the final Redemption. The relation between us and God, between this world and His world presses for recognition, but the line of intersection is not self-evident. <!-- p. 29

John D. Barrow photo
Václav Havel photo

“I frequently even took what was clearly a minority position and so reaped more opposition than recognition. Sometimes I may have been mistaken in this but I would like to assure you of one thing: I have always tried to abide by the dictates of the authority under which I took my oath of office — the dictates of the best of my awareness and conscience.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Farewell Address (2003)
Context: Today I would like to thank from my heart all those of you who have trusted me, sympathized with me or in any way supported me. Without your understanding and goodwill I would not have been able to stay in office for even a few moments. I appreciate your support all the more for the fact that I did not try at all costs to obtain it. I frequently even took what was clearly a minority position and so reaped more opposition than recognition. Sometimes I may have been mistaken in this but I would like to assure you of one thing: I have always tried to abide by the dictates of the authority under which I took my oath of office — the dictates of the best of my awareness and conscience.

William S. Burroughs photo

“Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

The Place Of Dead Roads‎ (1983), p. 155
Context: Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties. Those individuals who cannot or will not mind their business cling to the victimless-crime concept, equating drug use and private sexual behavior with robbery and murder. If the right to mind one's own business is recognized, the whole shit disposition is untenable and Hell hath no vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere Schema in a Doctrine of Wisdom”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

XIV.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
Context: Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere Schema in a Doctrine of Wisdom, although indeed a necessary and indispensable means to such a Doctrine: — a Schema, the sole aim of which is, with the knowledge thus acquired, — by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, — to return wholly into Actual Life; — not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us.

John F. Kennedy photo

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fibre of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

Herman Melville photo

“Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157 <!-- also in Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic (1921) by Raymond Melbourne Weaver -->
Context: Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is love appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory — the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.

Voltairine de Cleyre photo

“Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Anarchism & American Traditions (1908)
Context: Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement. Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the municipalities of the institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous advocates of independence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in the general Congress, devoted themselves to their home localities, endeavoring to work out of the minds of their neighbors and fellow-colonists the institutions of entailed property, of a State-Church, of a class-divided people, even the institution of African slavery itself. Though largely unsuccessful, it is to the measure of success they did achieve that we are indebted for such liberties as we do retain, and not to the general government.

Albert Hofmann photo

“For the entire duration of the experiment, I had even been aware of participating in an experiment, but despite this recognition of my condition, I could not, with every exertion of my will, shake off the LSD world.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Source: LSD : My Problem Child (1980), Ch. 1 : How LSD Originated
Context: This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my knowledge no other known substance that evoked such profound psychic effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes in human consciousness and our experience of the inner and outer world.
What seemed even more significant was that I could remember the experience of LSD inebriation in every detail. This could only mean that the conscious recording function was not interrupted, even in the climax of the LSD experience, despite the profound breakdown of the normal world view. For the entire duration of the experiment, I had even been aware of participating in an experiment, but despite this recognition of my condition, I could not, with every exertion of my will, shake off the LSD world. Everything was experienced as completely real, as alarming reality; alarming, because the picture of the other, familiar everyday reality was still fully preserved in the memory for comparison.
Another surprising aspect of LSD was its ability to produce such a far-reaching, powerful state of inebriation without leaving a hangover. Quite the contrary, on the day after the LSD experiment I felt myself to be, as already described, in excellent physical and mental condition.
I was aware that LSD, a new active compound with such properties, would have to be of use in pharmacology, in neurology, and especially in psychiatry, and that it would attract the interest of concerned specialists. But at that time I had no inkling that the new substance would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriant in the drug scene. Since my self-experiment had revealed LSD in its terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected was that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching a pleasure drug.

Karl Mannheim photo

“In general there are two distinct and separable meanings of the term "ideology" — the particular and the total.
The particular conception of ideology is implied when the term denotes that we are sceptical of the ideas and representations advanced by our opponent. They are regarded as more or less conscious disguises of the real nature of a situation, the true recognition of which would not be in accord with his interests.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: In general there are two distinct and separable meanings of the term "ideology" — the particular and the total.
The particular conception of ideology is implied when the term denotes that we are sceptical of the ideas and representations advanced by our opponent. They are regarded as more or less conscious disguises of the real nature of a situation, the true recognition of which would not be in accord with his interests. These distortions range all the way from conscious lies to half-conscious and unwitting disguises; from calculated attempts to dupe others to self-deception. This conception of ideology, which has only gradually become differentiated from the common-sense notion of the lie is particular in several senses. Its particularity becomes evident when it is contrasted with the more inclusive total conception of ideology. Here we refer to the ideology of an age or of a concrete historico-social group, e. g. of a class, when we are concerned with the characteristics and composition of the total structure of the mind of this epoch or of this group. Although they have something in common, there are also significant differences between them.

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo

“The Art of Sight Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer practised; and the studies of Geometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and fell into disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of Feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools….”

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 9. Of the Universal Colour Bill
Context: The Art of Sight Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer practised; and the studies of Geometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and fell into disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Art of Feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools.... Year by year the Soldiers and Artisans began more vehemently to assert — and with increasing truth — that there was no great difference between them and the very highest class of Polygons, now that they were raised to an equality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, whether Statical or Kinetical, by the simple process of Colour Recognition. Not content with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling. Soon, they began to insist that inasmuch as Colour, which was a second Nature, had destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the Law should follow in the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights.

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records, to my knowledge, date back some 2500 years or more… the recognition ATMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

"The I That Is God" as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
Context: In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records, to my knowledge, date back some 2500 years or more... the recognition ATMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.
Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“Recognition implies previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot recognize.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Source: 1970s, Krishnamurti in India, 1970-71 (1971), p. 157
Context: In seeking there are several things involved: there is the seeker and the thing that he seeks after. When the seeker finds what he thinks is truth, is God, is enlightenment, he must be able to recognize it. He must recognize it, right? Recognition implies previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot recognize. I cannot recognize you if I had not met you yesterday. Therefore when I say this is truth, I have already known it and therefore it is not truth. So a man who is seeking truth lives a life of hypocrisy, because his truth is the projection of his memory, of his desire, of his intentions to find something other than "what is", a formula. So seeking implies duality — the one who seeks and the thing sought after — and where there is duality there is conflict. There is wastage of energy. So you can never find it, you can never invite it.

Leó Szilárd photo

“The most important step in getting a job done is the recognition of the problem.”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

As quoted in "Close-up : I'm looking for a market for wisdom. : Leo Szilard, scientist" in LIFE‎ magazine, Vol. 51, no. 9 (1 September 1961), p. 75
Context: The most important step in getting a job done is the recognition of the problem. Once I recognize a problem I usually can think of someone who can work it out better than I could.

George Eliot photo

“While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.”

The Lifted Veil (1859); Eliot here quotes the Latin epitaph of Jonathan Swift, translated as "Where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more" · The Lifted Veil online at Wikisource
Context: I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still — "ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit" the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them.

Ralph Ellison photo

“Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.”

Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)
Context: I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.

Robert Frost photo

“For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may Want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick. Modern instruments of precision are being used to make things crooked as if by eye and hand in the old days.

Luciano Berio photo

“A composer's awareness of the plurality of functions of his own tools forms the basis for his responsibility just as, in everyday life, every man's responsibility begins with the recognition of the multiplicity of human races, conditions, needs, and ideals. I would go as far as to say (as my anger comes back) that any attempt to codify musical reality into a kind of imitation grammar (I refer mainly to the efforts associated with the Twelve-Tone System) is a brand of fetishism which shares with Fascism and racism the tendency to reduce live processes to immobile, labeled objects, the tendency to deal with formalities rather than substance.”

Luciano Berio (1925–2003) Italian composer

"The Composer on His Work : Meditation on a Twelve-Tone Horse", in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music : A Continuing Symposium (1996) edited by Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby, , p. 169
Context: A composer's awareness of the plurality of functions of his own tools forms the basis for his responsibility just as, in everyday life, every man's responsibility begins with the recognition of the multiplicity of human races, conditions, needs, and ideals. I would go as far as to say (as my anger comes back) that any attempt to codify musical reality into a kind of imitation grammar (I refer mainly to the efforts associated with the Twelve-Tone System) is a brand of fetishism which shares with Fascism and racism the tendency to reduce live processes to immobile, labeled objects, the tendency to deal with formalities rather than substance. Claude Lévi-Strauss describes (though to illustrate a different point) a captain at sea, his ship reduced to a frail raft without sails, who, by enforcing a meticulous protocol on his crew, is able to distract them from nostalgia for a safe harbor and from the desire for a destination.

Mark Ames photo

“And the fear reflects a still-censored recognition that the shootings have widespread sympathy among students, and that any student, at any school, could be next”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 184.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: The shootings are a direct assault on the American Dream- which is why they are so disturbing. The fear reflects how unsettling and piercing the crime is. And the fear reflects a still-censored recognition that the shootings have widespread sympathy among students, and that any student, at any school, could be next.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142.
Context: Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. … The very fact that the evil which assaults him is unjustifiable makes it imperative that he should not resist it, but play it out and overcome it by patiently enduring the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.

Zaman Ali photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo
H. H. Asquith photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Aga Khan III photo

“It is for the Indian patriot to recognise that Persia, Afghanistan and possibly Arabia must sooner or later come within the orbit of some Continental Power — such as Germany, or what may grow out of the break up of Russia — or must throw in their lot with that of the Indian Empire, with which they have so much more genuine affinity. The world forces that move small States into closer contact with powerful neighbours, though so far most visible in Europe, will inevitably make themselves felt in Asia. Unless she is willing to accept the prospect of having powerful and possibly inimical neighbours to watch, and the heavy military burdens thereby entailed, India cannot afford to neglect to draw her Mahomedan neighbour States to herself by the ties of mutual interest and goodwill … In a word, the path of beneficent and growing union must be based on a federal India, with every member exercising her individual rights, her historic peculiarities and natural interests, yet protected by a common defensive system and customs union from external danger and economic exploitation by stronger forces. Such a federal India would promptly bring Ceylon to the bosom of her natural mother, and the further developments we have indicated would follow. We can build a great South Asiatic Federation by now laying the foundations wide and deep on justice, on liberty, and on recognition for every race, every religion, and every historical entity … A sincere policy of assisting both Persia and Afghanistan in the onward march which modem conditions demand, will raise two natural ramparts for India in the north-west that neither German nor Slav, Turk nor Mongol, can ever hope to destroy. They will be drawn of their own accord towards the Power which provides the object lesson of a healthy form of federalism in India, with real autonomy for each province, with the internal freedom of principalities assured, with a revived and liberalised kingdom of Hyderabad, including the Berars, under the Nizam. They would see in India freedom and order, autonomy and yet Imperial union, and would appreciate for themselves the advantages of a confederation assuring the continuance of internal self-government buttressed by goodwill, the immense and unlimited strength of that great Empire on which the sun never sets. The British position of Mesopotamia and Arabia also, whatever its nominal form may be, would be infinitely strengthened by the policy I have advocated.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

India in Transition (1918)

Dolores Huerta photo
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J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Albert Einstein photo
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Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Vikram Sarabhai photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo

“These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Moslems. When time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India. And as it has happened in many countries under similar situation in the world the utmost that we can do under the circumstances is to form an Indian State in which none is allowed any special weightage of representation and none is paid an extra-price to buy his loyalty to the State. Mercenaries are paid and bought off, not sons of the Motherland to fight in her defence.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

V.D. Savarkar: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, quoted in part in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.332

Friedrich Engels photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Shankar Dayal Sharma photo

“As a constitutional expert, and a jurist he got unequivocal recognition from the Congress and non-Congress parties. They believed that the letter and spirit of the Constitution was safe in his hands…He was a spiritualist to the core.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.201.

Gottfried Helnwein photo

“It is the function of the artist to evoke the experience of surprised recognition: to show the viewer what he knows but does not know that he knows. Helnwein is a master of surprised recognition.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

William S. Burroughs, Helnwein's Work http://www.helnwein.com/texte/selected_authors/artikel_103.html, Lawrence, Kansas, 1990

Alain Badiou photo

“The heart of the question concerns the presumption of a univerasl human Subject, capable of reducing ethical issues to matters of human rights and humanitarian actions. We have seen that ethics subordniates the identification fo this subject to the universal recognition of the evil that is done to him. Ethics defines man as a victim.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

It will be objected: 'No! You are forgetting the active subject, the one that intervenes against barbarism!'So let us be precise: man is the being who is capable of recognzing himself as a victim.
Source: Ethics, Chapter One, Section III: "Man Living animal or immortal singularity?"

Prem Rawat photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Robert Greene photo