Education at school continues what has been done at home: it crystallizes the optical illusion, consolidates it with book learning..., theoretically legitimizes the traditional trash and trains the children to know without understanding and to accept denominations for definitions. Astray in his conceptions, entangled in words, man loses the flair for truth, the taste for nature. What a powerful intellect must you possess, to be suspicious of this moral carbon dioxide and with your head swimming already, to hurl yourself out of it into the fresh air, with which, into the bargain, everyone round is trying to scare you!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The vast majority of individual termites, belonging to the most highly evolved species, never leave their crowded fortress city, c...ould not see anything if they did, spend their entire existence in the narrow chambers and narrower tunnels of a labyrinth where they were born and where they breathe perpetually the damp, carbon dioxide atmosphere and dread more than anything else being compelled to leave it, even for an instant. The lives of certain human city dwellers who spend their days in air-conditioned offices, pass from them through tunnels of the subway to narrow chambers in some housing development, may seem remotely analogous.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in t...erms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that's the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not surprising that the motion picture relies to a considerable extent on devices borrowed from the theatre. There are many ...superficial points of resemblance between the two arts. Films are shown in auditoriums which do not differ in any marked degree from other playhouses. Stage actors perform in films. Stage training is still regarded as a fairly satisfactory prerequisite for appearance before the camera. Actors, directors, and writers move from stage to screen with comparative ease and with what seems to be minor adjustments of their techniques and methods. It is often customary to draw a stage curtain back and forth to mark the beginning and end of the drama projected on the screen within the proscenium arch.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been ...said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation makin...g such a claim. The pursuit of happiness ... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase "the pursuit of happiness" is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and ... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I ca...n't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits--like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing b...eautiful women, flying thought the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits--involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding--inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is for ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitablility of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »