Thursday, February 24, 2005
“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
- Susan Sontag (1933 – 2005), American essayist: opening worlds of preface to “Illness As Metaphor”, 1978.
“The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.”
- A.J. Ayer (1910 – 1989), British philosopher: ‘The Concept of Freedom’ in “The Meaning of Life and Other Essays”, 1990.
“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.”
- Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980), American psychologist: ‘The Need for a Frame of Orientation and Devotion – Reason vs. Irrationality’ in “The Same Society”, 1955.
“Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.”
- Lillian Hellman (1905 –1984), American playwright: journal entry, April 30, 1967, published in Hellman’s memoir “An Unfinished Woman”, 1969.
- Susan Sontag (1933 – 2005), American essayist: opening worlds of preface to “Illness As Metaphor”, 1978.
“The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.”
- A.J. Ayer (1910 – 1989), British philosopher: ‘The Concept of Freedom’ in “The Meaning of Life and Other Essays”, 1990.
“Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man’s instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.”
- Erich Fromm (1900 – 1980), American psychologist: ‘The Need for a Frame of Orientation and Devotion – Reason vs. Irrationality’ in “The Same Society”, 1955.
“Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.”
- Lillian Hellman (1905 –1984), American playwright: journal entry, April 30, 1967, published in Hellman’s memoir “An Unfinished Woman”, 1969.
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