Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
Will DurantRead
In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that achieving a straightforward solution or path can be complicated by unnecessary complexities in thought or action.
Will Durant's quote uses the metaphor of a straight line to illustrate how philosophical and political processes often become convoluted. It emphasizes that, while theoretically the simplest way between two points is a straight line, in practice, the journey often involves detours, obstacles, and complications, reflecting the challenges in both political and philosophical discourse.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on the challenges of decision-making in politics.
Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.
The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God.
If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.
Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.
We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society.
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.
I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth ... that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.