The individual's life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wishes to escape from history or give his life for it. History recks nothing of human logic
Oswald SpenglerRead
Tension without cosmic pulsation to animate it is the transition to nothingness
Interpretation
What this quote means
Tension without a dynamic force leads to emptiness.
This quote by Oswald Spengler suggests that mere tension or struggle, devoid of a greater animating force or purpose, ultimately leads to a state of nothingness or despair. It emphasizes the importance of having something profound, like a 'cosmic pulsation,' that gives meaning and direction to our efforts and challenges.
Themes
TensionCosmicEmptinessPurposeForce
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical lecture discussing the nature of existence.
More from Oswald Spengler
All quotes →In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.
Oswald SpenglerRead
Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself.
Oswald SpenglerRead
Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.
Oswald SpenglerRead
If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.
Oswald SpenglerRead
It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture.
Oswald SpenglerRead
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