"The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life."

--

Source : Julien Benda (2011). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”, p.146, Transaction Publishers

Julien Benda

#Modern Quotes #Defiance Quotes #Cult Quotes

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.”

Source : Herbert Marcuse (2007). “The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse”, p.50, Beacon Press
“Black people in America have to, for their own protection, develop a defense mechanism, and I just grew terribly tired of it. When you sustain that kind of affront, and sustain it and sustain it and sustain it, something happens to you. You try to steer a course in American society that's not self-destructive. But America is a country that inflicts injury. It does not like to see anything that comes in response, and accuses one of anger as if it were an unnatural response. For anyone who is not white in America, the affronts are virtually across the board.”

Source : Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 26, 2005.
“Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.”
“Knowledge is not to be taken from four types of people: a foolish person who openly acts foolish, even if he reports the most narrations; an adherent of bid'ah who calls to his desires; a person who lies, even if I don't accuse him of lying in hadith; and a righteous pious worshiper who does not accurately retain what he narrates.”
“There's nothing wrong with making mistakes, just don't make the same ones. We don't want to duplicate them.”
“Writing is more than just the making of a series of comprehensible statements: it is the gathering in of connotations; the harvesting of them, like blackberries in a good season, ripe and heavy, snatched from among the thorns of logic.”
“I drink to make other people interesting.”

Source : George Jean Nathan, Charles Angoff (1998). “The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary”, Hal Leonard Corporation
“I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.”

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