The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.
Thomas MannRead
The Freudian theory is one of the most important foundation stones for an edifice to be built by future generations, the dwelling of a freer and wiser humanity.
Interpretation
The Freudian theory serves as a crucial basis for future understanding and progress in human knowledge.
In this quote, Thomas Mann highlights the significance of Freudian theory as a fundamental building block for future intellectual developments. He envisions a future where humanity is more enlightened and liberated, suggesting that the insights gained from Freud's work will help shape a wiser society.
In practice
In a psychology seminar, I quoted this to emphasize the importance of foundational theories.
The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.
Stupid β well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.
Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.
One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.
Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by.
There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.
Anarchism does not repudiate the right of ownership, but it has a conception thereof sufficiently different from [others'] to include the possibility of an end of that social organization which will arise, not out of the ruins of government, but out of the transformation of government into voluntary association for defence.
Certainly one of the most enthralling things about human life is the recognition that we live in what, for practical purposes, is a universe without bounds.
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses.
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