My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Cynics see everyone as flawed, while idealists only see flaws in others but consider themselves righteous.
This quote illustrates a dichotomy in how different mindsets perceive morality and integrity. Cynics adopt a broadly skeptical view, believing that corruption and moral failings are universal traits among all people. In contrast, idealists maintain a belief in their own moral superiority despite acknowledging the same flaws in others. This highlights the subjective nature of judgment and self-perception in human behavior.
Themes
CynicismIdealismMoralityPerceptionJudgment
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a discussion on ethics in philosophy class to illustrate divergent views on human nature.
More from Robert Anton Wilson
All quotes βThere is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Similar quotes
The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit.
Karl PopperRead
While the notion that torture works has been glorified in television shows and movies, the simple truth is this: torture has never been an effective interrogation method.
Jerrold NadlerRead
The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and of what life he should live.
PlatoRead
Power was my weakness and my temptation.
J. K. RowlingRead
What have I done? I've blundered my way through life. So I have my picture on the wall. The minute I die, that picture will start to yellow and fade and eventually be gone. Blown in the wind and become part of the molecular structure of something else. These things we see as "success," they're non-accomplishments.
William ShatnerRead
We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.
Philip PullmanRead