Sublime
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above all, don’t talk about people, either to praise or criticize them, or to compare them.
Epictetus • Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World's Classics)
Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion of communication, by contrast, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism:
So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop
Byung-Chal Han • Vita Contemplativa
Philosopher George Santayana on why we follow the crowd:
“A man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body.
He may like to go alone for a walk,
but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.”
Novelty emerges from an individual mind, when it is judged by a committee, orthodoxy will usually prevail.
Hand Eysenck • Genius: The Natural History of Creativity (Problems in the Behavioural Sciences, Series Number 12)
They hang the man and flog the women
who steals the goose from off the common,
but leave the greater villain loose
who steals the common from the goose.
The law locks up the man and woman
who steals the goose from off the common.
The goose will still a common lack
until it goes and steals it back.
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
– Noam Chomsky
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell • A Collection of Essays
The realm of dainin—great people or true adults—has yet to begin. You could say that we are now living in an era of barbaric humanity, a sort of prehistory. We haven’t yet begun a historical period of true humanity. Now, it’s just primitive human beings being led by the nose by greed. It’s like a frenzied world of people just scraping and clawing a
... See moreDaitsu Tom Wright • The Roots of Goodness
smaller than its reputation.