Perhaps violence, like pornography, is some kind of an evolutionary standby system, a last-resort device for throwing a wild joker... into the game?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In so far as religion assumes the world to be directed by conscious agents who may be turned from their purpose by persuasion, it ...stands in fundamental antagonism to magic as well as to science, both of which take for granted that the course of nature is determined, not by the passions or caprice of personal beings, but by the operation of immutable laws acting mechanically. In magic, indeed, the assumption is only implicit, but in science it is explicit. It is true that magic often deals with spirits, which are personal agents of the kind assumed by religion; but whenever it does so in its proper form, it treats them in exactly in the same fashion as it treats inanimate agents, that is, it constrains or coerces instead of conciliating or propitiating them as religion would do. Thus it assumes that all personal beings, whether human or divine, are in the last resort subject to those impersonal forces which control all things, but which nevertheless can be turned to account by any one who knows how to manipulate them by the appropriate ceremonies and spells.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill, a...nd must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dylan is to me the perfect symbol of the anti-artist in our society. He is against everything--the last resort of someone who does...n't really want to change the world.... Dylan's songs accept the world as it is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reviews and magazines are at best ephemeral & superficial reading. Who thinks of the grand article of last year in any given revie...w?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of i...ts guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are..., like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reason that I call my doctrine logical atomism is because the atoms that I wish to arrive at as the sort of last residue in an...alysis are logical atoms and not physical atoms. Some of them will be what I call 'particulars'Msuch things as little patches of color or sounds, momentary things--and some of them will be predicates or relations and so on.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »