Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known
Source: The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Topic
From Francis Bacon's practical epistemology to Blake's insistence that perception precedes desire, this collection traces knowledge through its contradictions. Henry Adams's terse observation that those who know enough know how to learn sits alongside Galileo's confession that he suppressed his discoveries out of fear — a reminder that what we know and what we dare to say are often different things. Burbank defines knowledge as classified truth; Kierkegaard suggests that most people travel the world to gape at existence without learning anything. The quotes here are skeptical of expertise without curiosity, of information without wisdom, and of the certainty that closes doors rather than opens them. Collected from philosophers, scientists, and poets, they make a useful companion when the gap between what you know and what you understand feels wide.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
I think, therefore I am.
It is never too late to be wise.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.
A life without investigation is not worth living.
Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered far and wide.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes, I mean the universe, but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written.
Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed.
A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.