There exists a black kingdom which the eyes of man avoid because its landscape fails signally to flatter them. This darkness, whic...h he imagines he can dispense with in describing the light, is error with its unknown characteristics.... Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to... tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis..., and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a litt...le more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action--the ability to pass d...irectly from thought to action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"I suppose with the French Revolution for a father and the Russian Revolution for a mother, you can very well dispense with a fami...ly," he observed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If theology is an effort to construct a rational and systematic view of life out of the various and sometimes contradictory myths ...which are associated with a single religious tradition, philosophy carries the process one step further by seeking to dispense with the mythical basis altogether and resting its world-view entirely upon the ground of rational consistency. Thus for Hegel, religion is no more than primitive philosophy in terms of crude picture-thinking, which a more advanced rationality refines. This rationalization of myth is indeed inevitable and necessary, lest religion be destroyed by undisciplined and fantastic imagery or primitive and inconsistent myth. Faith must feed on reason. (Unamuno.) But reason must also feed on faith. Every authentic religious myth contains paradoxes of the relation between the finite and the eternal which cannot be completely rationalized without destroying the genius of true religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »