14 quotes
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
Nothing is so unsettling to a social order as the presence of a mass of scribes without suitable employment and an acknowledged status.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
There can be no freedom without freedom to fail.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are "vowed" to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
Not only does the intellectual's penchant for tutoring, directing, and regulating promote a regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous is bound to foster an austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
It has been often stated that a social order is likely to be stable so long as it gives scope to talent. Actually, it is the ability to give scope to the untalented that is most vital in maintaining social stability.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
If in order to keep the wheels turning you have to deafen ears with propaganda, crack the whip of Terror, and keep pushing people around, then you haven't got a machine civilization no matter how numerous and ingenious your machines.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
There is in even the most selfish passion a large element of self-abnegation. It is startling to realize that what we call extreme self-seeking is actually self-renunciation. The miser, health addict, glory chaser and their like are not far behind the selfless in the exercise of self-sacrifice.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)
The impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.
The Ordeal of Change (1963)