The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think of ...a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kep...t ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective scepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common- sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common-sense is destroyed. Common-sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of enquiry, from philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The enquiry in England is not whether a man has talents & genius, but whether he is passive & polite & a virtuous ass & obedient t...o noblemen's opinions in art & science. If he is, he is a good man. If not, he must be starved.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was a continuous movement now, from Zone Five to Zone Four. And from Zone Four to Zone Three, and from us, up the pass. Ther...e was a lightness, a freshness, and an enquiry and a remaking and an inspiration where there had been only stagnation. And closed frontiers. For this is how we all see it now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only ways of enquiry that lead to knowledge ... the one way assuming that being is and that it is impossible for it not to be,... is the trustworthy path, for truth attends it. The Other, that non-being is and that it necessarily is, I call a wholly incredible course, since thou canst not recognize not-being ... nor couldst thou speak of it, for though and being are the same things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us enquire. Who, then, shall challenge the words? Why are they challenged. And by whom? By those who call themselves the guard...ians of morality, and who are the constituted guardians of religion. Enquiry, it seems, suits not them. They have drawn the line, beyond which human reason shall not pass--above which human virtue shall not aspire! All that is without their faith or above their rule, is immorality, is atheism, is--I know not what.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to b...eware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: and... has often, in reality, the force ascribed to it. LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects, ...as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of v...irtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »