That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very... few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient's taking the law... into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Historically speaking, the most obvious and most decisive distinction between the American and the French Revolutions was that the... historical inheritance of the American Revolution was "limited monarchy" and that of the French Revolution an absolutism which apparently reached far back into the first centuries of our era and the last centuries of the Roman Empire. Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A few days ago, while seated snugly in an airplane seat on my way back to New York from Chicago,... it occurred to me that a rathe...r striking similarity existed between the situation I found myself in then, flying in a modern airplane, and what I've often felt as I watch television. To begin with, both experiences are largely passive, or at any rate they have been transformed into passive experiences. But this shared passivity is itself more complicated than it seems, for though it produces in both cases an obvious condition of quiet and inactivity, it also demands from the passenger or viewer a very definite emotional commitment. One might call it a commitment to specifically nonaggressive and uninvolved behavior.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To suppose that "I know" is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so common in philosophy. Even if... some language is now purely descriptive, language was not in origin so, and much of it is still not so. utterance of obvious ritual phrases, in the appropriate circumstances, is not describing the action we are doing, but doing it ("I do"): in other cases it functions, like tone and expression, or again like punctuation and mood, as an intimation that we are employing language in a special way ("I warn," "I ask," "I define"). Such phrases cannot, strictly, be lies, though they can "imply" lies, as "I promise" implies that I fully intend, which may be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it suppl...ies a sanction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us.... This is the easiest of sciences,... a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The question is still asked of women: "How do you propose to answer the need for child care?" That is an obvious attempt to struct...ure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: "If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Analogies between the stage and the screen assume that they deal with the same material. But they don't. The material of the scree...n is not actual objects but images fixed on the film. And the very fact that they have their being on film endows these images with properties which are never found in actual objects. For instance, on the stage the actor moves in real space and time. He cannot even cross the room without performing a definite number of movements. On the screen an action may be shown only in terminal points with all its intervening moments left out. Similarly, in watching a performance on the stage the spectator is governed by the actual conditions of space and time. Not so in the case of the movie spectator. Thanks to the moving camera he is able to view the scene from all kinds of angles, leaping from a long-distance view to a close-range inspection of every detail. It is obvious that with this extraordinary power of handling space and time--by elimination and emphasis, according to its dramatic needs--the motion picture can never be content with modeling itself after the stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is one of those distinctions which is obvious, without being sharp or clear. It is obvious, and remains obvious, to every norma...l mind, although when we come to analyze it, we may not be able to rule a boundary line. It remains obvious, as the distinction between day and night remains obvious, though, when we begin to analyze that distinction, we come up against such refinements as dusk and twilight. There is more than one way of characterizing the difference. Perception is essentially a passive experience, something that happens to us; thinking is an active one, something that we do. Or if you don't like this distinction, because of refinements such as the "intentionality" which some have detected (rightly, I would say) in perception, or on the other hand because of the passivity of that uncontrolled type of thinking called "reverie," then thoughts are something that comes from within; perceptions something that comes from without.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »