Moderators: Three Stars, dagny, pfim, netwolf
Guinness wrote:"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." ~ H.L. Mencken
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." ~ H.L. Mencken
"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent." ~ H.L. Mencken
"The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men." ~ H.L. Mencken
"Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods." ~ H.L. Mencken
http://www.strike-the-root.com/quotes
Kraftster wrote:Glad you posted this. I just came across H.L. Mencken for the first time recently (can't remember in what context now), and I had forgotten that I wanted to look into him.
Guinness wrote:Kraftster wrote:Glad you posted this. I just came across H.L. Mencken for the first time recently (can't remember in what context now), and I had forgotten that I wanted to look into him.
Here's one for you, K:
"[The average man] is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies." ~ H.L. Mencken
Consequently, if my reason, which is in a certain sense a part of the reason of all my brothers in humanity in time and space, teaches me this absolute scepticism in respect of what concerns my longing for never-ending life, I think that I can assume that my feeling of life, which is the essence of life itself, my vitality, my boundless appetite for living and my abhorrence of dying, my refusal to submit to death—that it is this which suggests to me the doctrines with which I try to counter-check the working of the reason. Have these doctrines an objective value? someone will ask me, and I shall answer that I do not understand what this objective value of a doctrine is. I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it was all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work and, above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die out altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself—that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny will have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life—life will be wrested from me.
To have recourse to those, ambiguous words, 'optimism' and 'pessimism,' does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very contrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a doctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and the so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe, on the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatest of all, have been men of despair and that by despair they have accomplished their mighty works. Apart from this, however, and accepting in all their ambiguity these denominations of optimism and pessimism, [] there exists a certain transcendental pessimism which may be the begetter of a temporal and terrestrial optimism …
“They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn’t want to be broken.”
Kraftster wrote:Tremendous quote that my mom sent me today. From Miguel De Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life:Consequently, if my reason, which is in a certain sense a part of the reason of all my brothers in humanity in time and space, teaches me this absolute scepticism in respect of what concerns my longing for never-ending life, I think that I can assume that my feeling of life, which is the essence of life itself, my vitality, my boundless appetite for living and my abhorrence of dying, my refusal to submit to death—that it is this which suggests to me the doctrines with which I try to counter-check the working of the reason. Have these doctrines an objective value? someone will ask me, and I shall answer that I do not understand what this objective value of a doctrine is. I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it was all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work and, above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die out altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself—that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny will have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life—life will be wrested from me.
To have recourse to those, ambiguous words, 'optimism' and 'pessimism,' does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very contrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a doctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and the so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe, on the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatest of all, have been men of despair and that by despair they have accomplished their mighty works. Apart from this, however, and accepting in all their ambiguity these denominations of optimism and pessimism, [] there exists a certain transcendental pessimism which may be the begetter of a temporal and terrestrial optimism …
Kraftster wrote:
Glad you posted this. I just came across H.L. Mencken for the first time recently (can't remember in what context now), and I had forgotten that I wanted to look into him.
Gaucho wrote:Kraftster wrote:
Glad you posted this. I just came across H.L. Mencken for the first time recently (can't remember in what context now), and I had forgotten that I wanted to look into him.
Well, don't look too close into his views on race and Jews.
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
In the second century A.D. the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius may have best defined pantheism when he wrote, “Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy.
We are part of Nature as a whole whose order we follow - Spinoza
Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. - Leibniz
(For my money, the strongest mind that I've ever read)
All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature. - Zeno
I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature. - Mikhail Gorbachev
Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray. - Kabir
When the Ten Thousand things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the Origin and remain where we have always been. - Sen T'sen
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful;
he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing,
and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. - Jules Henri Poincare
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. - Oscar Wilde, Panthea
We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching
of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature. - Henry David Thoreau
A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. - Albert Einstein
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. - Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
The word pantheism derives from the Greek words pan ='all' and theos ='God'. Thus pantheism means 'All is God'. In essence, pantheism holds that there is no divinity other than the universe and nature. Pantheism is a religious belief that reveres and cares for nature, a religion that joyously accepts this life as our only life, and this earth as our only paradise, if we look after it. Pantheism revels in the beauty of nature and the night sky, and is full of wonder at their mystery and power. Pantheism believes that all things are linked in profound unity ... All things interconnected and interdependent. In life and in death we humans are an inseparable part of this unity, and in realising this we can find our joy and our peace. - Paul Harrison
I believe the universe is one being; all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole ... The whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God; rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions- the world of spirits. - Robinson Jeffers, Pantheism
Willie Kool wrote:"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests