It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.
Rene DaumalRead
Truth is one, but error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth. But the ultimate atom will always essentially be an error, a miscalculation.
Interpretation
Truth is singular, while errors are many. Humanity struggles to dissect errors in pursuit of understanding the ultimate truth.
This quote by Rene Daumal reflects on the nature of truth and error, suggesting that while there is a singular concept of truth, errors are abundant and can be confusing. Humans attempt to analyze and break down these errors to find some semblance of truth, but it implies that even our best efforts can lead us astray, as the fundamental source of error may never be fully rectified or understood, highlighting the complexity of truth-seeking.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a philosophy discussion about the nature of truth and knowledge.
It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.
In the mythic tradition, the Mountain is the bond between Earth and Sky. Its solitary summit reaches the sphere of eternity, and its base spreads out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the way by which man can raise himself to the divine and by which the divine can reveal itself to man.
The door to the invisible must be visible.
I am dead because I have no desire,_x000D_ I have no desire because I think I possess,_x000D_ I think I possess because I do not try to give;_x000D_ Trying to give, we see that we have nothing;_x000D_ Seeing that we have nothing, we try to give ourselves,_x000D_ Trying to give ourselves, we see that we are nothing,_x000D_ Seeing that we are nothing, we desire to become,_x000D_ Desiring to become, we live.
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.
Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.
Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.
In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.
The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?
Freud was way off base in considering sex the fundamental motivation. The ruling passion in men is minding each other's business.
The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.
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