Famous Quotes

Quotes by Herbert Read

• I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.
• I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.
• I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.
• It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.
• It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.
• My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.
• Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.
• Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
• The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.
• The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.
• The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.
• The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.
• The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.
• The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.
• These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.
• To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.
• We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.
• What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.