Who, when he dies, can tell himself, “I have comprehended as much world as I am able, and have transformed it into my humanness,” has fulfilled his aim.
Feuerbach thought that monotheistic religion had anyway resulted from humans’ choosing their own best qualities, naming those qualities “God,” and worshipping them.
My defence at any Last Judgement would be ‘I was trying to connect up and use all the fragments I was born with.’
And if we still want miracles, what greater miracle could there be than this beautifully ordered, varied world all round us?
This is one of the toughest tests for creative artists: to remain ever unaware of their best qualities in order not to rob them of authenticity.
Perhaps the genders are more closely related than people think. The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this: that male and female, freed from all false feelings and disinclinations, do not seek each other as objects but rather as siblings and neighbors; to become human together; simply, seriously, and patiently helping each other bear the burden that sexuality has placed on them.
But there is much beauty here because there is much beauty everywhere.
Learn what you find worth learning. I hope you will love them as I have.
I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
There’s a logic that’s long guided Hollywood, at least since the beginning of the blockbuster era: Teens will watch things intended for them but will shy from things aimed squarely at adults. Adults will watch things aimed at them, but will also watch things aimed at (older) teens. Men will watch things made for them, but will shy from things made “for” women. Women will watch films made for them and will also readily watch things made for men. So if you want to make the biggest hit possible, you aim for something that will hit all four quadrants: a film aimed squarely at an audience of 16-18 year old boys.
A picture represented something other than itself; a painting represents itself. A picture mediates between a viewer and an object in pictorial space; a painting is an object to which the viewer relates without mediation…
See a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour
He was the first to understand that before looking for extraterrestrials in the depths of space, we ought to begin by contacting the intraterrestrials.
It was long thought that computers in general and artificial intelligence programmes in particular would mingle human concepts and present them from a new angle. In short, electronics was expected to deliver a new philosophy. But even when it is presented differently, the raw material remains the same: ideas produced by human imaginations. It is a dead end. The best way to renew thought is to go outside the human imagination.
In Africa, people are sadder about the death of an old man than about that of a new-born baby. The old man represented a wealth of experience that might have benefited the tribe whereas the new-born baby had not lived and could not even be aware of dying. In Europe, people are sad about the new-born baby because they think he might well have done wonderful things if he had lived. On the other hand, they pay little attention to the death of the old man, who had already lived his life anyway.
…the human race being one of the few species capable of abandoning or mistreating its offspring.
Entomologists have long been inclined to the theory that ants are incapable of suffering and that this is the basis of their society’s cohesion.
Individualism is our true enemy. If a brother is in need and you allow him to die of hunger, you are no longer worthy of belonging to the world. If a lost soul asks you for help and you close the door in his face, you are not one of us.
But her life was useful
Your intentions will be judged by your actions.
Whether [my drawings] were good or bad had nothing to do with their most valuable asset: They were a means of experiencing a place or a moment more deeply.
Originality, personality, or style can neither be encouraged nor prevented. Forget the matter.
I pray every single second of my life. I never get on my knees or anything like that, but I pray with my work.
A stick beats more ugliness into a person than it ever beats out.