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What keeps earth air breathable? Not oxygen alone. The earth is a freer place to breathe in, every time you love without calculating a return – every time you make your drudgeries and routines still more inefficient by stopping to experience the shock of beauty wherever it unpredictably flickers.

— Peter Viereck The Unadjusted Man (1956)

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More quotes by Peter Viereck

The historic content of conservatism stands, above all, for two things: organic unity and rooted liberty.

Conservatism Revisited (1949)

The motive for tyranny is not economics but will to power. Behind power, such motives as vanity, inferiority complex, sadism, fear, frustration, and just plain cussedness must also be considered.

Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals (1953)

Without inner psychological liberty, outer civil liberties are not quite enough. We can talk civil liberties, prosperity, democracy with the tongues of men and angels, but it is merely a case of "free from what?" and not "free for what?" if we use this freedom for no other purpose than to commit television or go lusting after supermarkets.

The Unadjusted Man (1956)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Peter Viereck (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.