Law, Political Theory and Psychological Science
Sociology
Society Analogy: Humans and Porcupines
Aug 17th
A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance More >
Germaine Greer Quotes
Jun 19th
The most powerful entities on earth are not governments but the multi-national corporations that see women as their territory, indoctrinating them with their versions of beauty, health and hygiene, medicating them and cultivating their dependency in order to medicate them some more.
Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality. They’ve become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for example, who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master’s ulterior motives — to be fattened or made docile — women have been cut off from their capacity for action. It’s a process More >
The Roman Catholic Church Comparison to Atheism
Jun 5th
Roman Catholicism is even worse than Atheism itself, in my opinion! Yes, that’s my opinion! Atheism only preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by themselves, the opposite of Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I declare it does, I assure you it does! This is the conviction I have long held, and it has distressed me, myself… Roman Catholicism cannot hold its position without universal political supremacy, and cries: ‘Non possumus!’ To my thinking Roman Catholicism is not even a religion, but simply the continuation of the Western Roman Empire, More >
Sigmund Freud Quotes
Jun 3rd
A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion — in Schiller’s words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant, and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology. it has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now since I have hit upon the neuroses, it has come so much the nearer.
One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of More >
Rollo May Quotes
Jun 3rd
Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation; but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within.
We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one’s total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One’s religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying More >
English Proverbs
Jun 2nd
If you have heard of any more English Proverbs please let me know by contacting me.
A
A bad settlement is better than a good lawsuit.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
A bad penny always turns up.
A bellyful is one of meat, drink, or sorrow.
A big tree attracts the woodsman’s axe.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
A bad workman blames his tools.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
A burnt child dreads the fire.
A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
A little pot is easily hot.
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.
A More >
C. Wright Mills Quotes
May 16th
To have peace and not war, the drift toward a war economy, as facilitated by the moves and the demands of the sophisticated conservatives, must be stopped; to have peace without slump, the tactics and policies of the practical right must be overcome. The political and economic power of both must be broken. The power of these giants of main drift is both economically and politically anchored; both unions and an independent labor party are needed to struggle effective.
The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings More >
Stanislav Andreski Quotes
May 16th
So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.
Laughter is a mental mechanism which enables us to face reality without falling into despondency or delusion. As people who have sunk in apathy seldom bother us by rushing More >
Edward Bernays Quotes
May 16th
The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as society has changed.
The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.
It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.
For the same reason I read the National Geographic, I like to see places I will never visit.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those More >
Jacques Ellul Quotes
May 12th
Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances.
I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.
People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do More >
Ferdinand Foch Quotes
May 12th
Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.
The military art is not an accomplishment, an art for dilettante, a sport. You do not make war without reason, without an object, as you would give yourself up to music, painting, hunting, lawn tennis, where there is no great harm done whether you stop altogether or go on, whether you do little or much. Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating. When you are at war you have no power to act at random. Each operation has a raison d’etre, that is an object; that object, once More >
Suicide Quotes
May 12th
I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat. - Antonin Artaud
“You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.” - Chuck Palahniuk
I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life. - Damien Hirst
There is no refuge from confession but More >
Émile Durkheim Quotes
May 12th
In the name of the dogma of struggle for existence and natural selection, they paint for us in the saddest colors this primitive humanity whose hunger and thirst, always badly satisfied, were their only passions; those sombre times when men had no other care and no other occupation than to quarrel with one another over their miserable nourishment. To react against those retrospective reveries of the philosophy of the eighteenth century and also against certain religious doctrines, to show with some force that the paradise lost is not behind us and that there is in our past nothing to regret, More >
Alexandre Dumas Quotes
May 12th
Nothing succeeds like success.
And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude… I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.
The chains of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them; sometimes three.
Sleeping on a plank has one advantage – it encourages early rising.
All for one, one for all, that is our motto.
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more
Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who More >
Houston Stewart Chamberlain Quotes
May 12th
We find that actual, concrete knowledge, that is, the great work of toilsome discovery, has one deadly enemy, omniscience. The Jews are a case in point; if a man possesses a sacred book, which contains all wisdom, then all further investigation is as superfluous as it is sinful: the Christian Church took over the Jewish tradition. This fastening on to Judaism, which was so fatal for our history, is being accomplished before our very eyes; it can be demonstrated step by step. The old Church Fathers, taking their stand expressly upon the Jewish Torah, are unanimous in preaching contempt of More >
Noam Chromsky Quotes
Apr 21st
American Political Philosopher (7/12/1928 - ( / / ).
You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible – not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide – I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert More >
Education: What should be taught?
Apr 11th
Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce. What it should produce is a belief that knowledge is attainable in a measure, though with difficulty; that much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be rectified by care and industry. In acting upon our beliefs, we should be very cautious where a small error would mean disaster; nevertheless it is upon our beliefs that we must act. This state of mind is rather difficult: it requires a high degree of More >
Friedrich Hayek Quotes
Apr 2nd
Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists, deriving from certain tendencies of abstract thought with which for a long time only the intellectuals were familiar; and it required long efforts by the intellectuals before the working classes could be persuaded to adopt it as their program.
A policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy.
The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public More >
