No consensus of men can make an error erroneous. We can only find or commit an error, not create it. When we commit an error, we say what was an error already.
Josiah RoyceRead
We seek true individuality and the true individuals. But we find them not. For lo, we mortals see what our poor eyes can see; and they, the true individuals, - they belong not to this world of our merely human sense and thought.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the desire to find genuine individuality and understanding of true individuals that surpasses human perception.
Josiah Royce’s quote expresses a profound struggle to recognize true individuality among people. It suggests that while we yearn for authentic individuals who stand out from the ordinary, our limited human perception often fails to grasp their essence, indicating that true individuals operate on a level beyond our conventional understanding and experiences.
Themes
IndividualityPerceptionExistenceTruthHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about identity, one might use this quote to emphasize the complexity of understanding ourselves and others.
More from Josiah Royce
All quotes →That this individual life of all of us is not something limited in its temporal expression to the life that now we experience, follows from the very fact that here nothing final or individual is found expressed.
Josiah RoyceRead
A crowd, whether it be a dangerous mob, or an amiably joyous gathering at a picnic is not a community. It has a mind, but no institutions, no organizations, no coherent unity, no history, no traditions.
Josiah RoyceRead
Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself.
Josiah RoyceRead
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