Feb 3
"A young man or young woman somehow catches ideas that are in the air, but finds that these ideas are anathema in the particular milieu in which he or she lives. It easily seems to the young as if the only milieu with which they are acquainted were representative of the whole world. They can scarcely believe that in another place or another set the views which they dare not avow for fear of being thought utterly perverse would be accepted . . . . Thus through ignorance of the world a great deal of unnecessary misery is endured, sometimes only in youth, but not infrequently throughout life. This isolation is not only a source of pain; it also causes a great dissipation of energy in the unnecessary task of maintaining mental independence against hostile surroundings, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred produces a certain timidity in following out ideas to their logical conclusions. . . .
To the majority, of course, the surroundings in which they happen to find themselves are sympathetic. They imbibe current prejudices in youth, and instinctively adapt themselves to the beliefs and customs which they find in existence around them. But to a large minority, which includes practically all who have any intellectual or artistic merit, this attitude of acquiescence is impossible."
- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (101)
Jan 28
"[W]hen we write with ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we seem to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this communication at pleasure. . . . Well, the world has a million writers. One would think, then, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water, and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we can count all our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful verse for twenty years."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"
Jan 28
"As all men have some access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communication in their head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand. There is an inequality, whose laws we do not yet know, between two men and between two moments of the same man, in respect to this faculty. In common hours, we have the same facts as in the uncommon or inspired, but they do not sit for their portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a web. The thought of genius is spontaneous; but the power of picture or expression . . . implies a mixture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states, without which no production is possible."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"
Jan 28
"Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle . . . . Men say, Where did he get this? and think there was something divine in his life. But no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get a lamp to ransack their attics."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"
Jan 28
"Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood . . . . I cannot see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind, and blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your horizon. . . .
When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note–books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect"
Jan 28
"Many cultural pessimists identify great culture with what they know and have learned to love. But a culture already admired by the establishment usually is a culture whose best days lie in the past. The pessimists focus on the decline of what they like and neglect the nascent forces that will appeal to others. Even if long-term trends are strongly positive, at each point in time the world may appear to be experiencing a cultural downturn.
As cultural commentators, we are like observers on the shoreline, watching ships sail away over the horizon. We can see the departing ships dwindle in size, but we cannot observe the new ships approaching our field of vision. We have a memory of each ship that has left, but no corresponding marker for those in the early stages of their voyages to us. We see classic rock of the 1960s in decline, but we are much less familiar with the current and future performers who will take their place. Observers in 1963 might have mourned the death of Buddy Holly, but did not yet know much about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones."
— Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Commercial Culture (182-183)
Jan 22
"A young person appreciates metaphysical explanations because they show him something highly meaningful in matters he found unpleasant or despicable. If he is dissatisfied with himself, his feeling is relieved if he can recognize in that which he so disapproves of in himself the innermost riddle of the world or its misery. To feel less responsible, and at the same time to find things more interesting: that is the twofold benefit which he owes to metaphysics. Later, of course, he comes to distrust the whole method of metaphysical explanation; then perhaps he understands that those same effects are to be obtained just as well and more scientifically in another way; he understands that physical and historical explanations bring about at least as much that feeling of irresponsibility."
— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, #17
Jan 22
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, #483
Jan 22
"It is much more common for a person to appear to have character because he always acts in accord with his temperament, rather than because he always acts in accord with his principles."
— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, #485
Jan 22
"[Y]ou think of yourself as no more than a single thread in the robe, whose duty it is to conform to the mass of people — just as a single white thread seemingly has no wish to clash with the remainder of the garment. But I aspire to be the purple stripe, that is, the garment's brilliant hem. However small a part it may be, it can still manage to make the garment as a whole attractive. Don't tell me, then, 'Be like the rest,' because in that case I cannot be the purple stripe. . . .
Consider at which price you sell your integrity; but please, for God's sake, don't sell it cheap."
— Discourses, I:2
