Heidegger, were he alive today

would be horrified if asked to tweet.

without responsibility

opportunity can be wasted or distorted; without opportunity all the responsibility in the world is meaningless. we need the ladders to climb, the courage and responsibility to climb them, and the support of others to help us on our way.

the immensely rapid advance

in the exploitation of American economic resources has meant throughout the history of the United States, despite recurrent crises, a prospect of very high profits for the successful business adventurer, and this prospect has bred in the American people a speculative temper of a kind that exists nowhere else in anything like the same degree.

this temper has contributed greatly to the instability of the American business system and has exaggerated its repercussions on the rest of the world.

the starting point

of progressive politics has always been the view that every voice, however powerless, however marginalised, sometimes however misguided, has the equal right to be heard. if equality starts anywhere, it must start here, from the grounding assumption that a nation is nothing but its people, a democracy is nothing but its citizens and that every voice counts the same, has an equal right to be heard.

sometimes the voice of the people can be uncomfortable, sometimes worse than that, but each of us has to make a profound choice: either we trust the people or we don't.

occupy

merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid

the attempt to impose

upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen

coastal people

never really know what the ocean symbolizes to land-locked inland people - what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by a mystery that can never be fathomed.

quality for sheep

is what the shepherd says. and if you take a sheep and put it up at the timberline at night when the wind is roaring, that sheep will be panicked half to death and will call and call until the shepherd comes, or comes the wolf.

(1781) our age is the genuine age

of criticism, to which everything must submit. religion through its holiness and legislation through its majesty commonly seek to exempt themselves from it. but in this way they excite a just suspicion against themselves, and cannot lay claim to that unfeigned respect that reason grants only to that which has been able to withstand its free and public examination

the church of reason

he didn't get whipped. he didn't work. and the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.

this is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civilization, "the system", is pulled by mules. this is a common, vocational, "location" point of view, but it's not the Church attitude.

the Church attitude is that civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.

it is a pity

that so many young writers drawn from the proletariat can make no better use of their working class experience than as material for introspective novels

the steer who had been gored

had gotten off his feet and stood against the stone wall. none of the bulls came near him, and he did not attempt to join the herd.

I paused to listen to the silence

my breath, crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze gentler than a whisper. the day was dying, the night being born - but with great peace.

in that instant I could feel no doubt about man's oneness with the universe.

and now he began to see

for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. he had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth - but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.

the fisherman and his soul

what men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but the body of the soul.

to live only for some future goal

is shallow. it's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. here's where things grow.

we take a handful of sand

from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

no man can wear

one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

видя ли пеперудите?

попитала чак тогава предпазливо. не, отвърнал уморено и легнал от своята страна, нищo не видях, сигурно са отлетели.

the world breaks every one

and afterward many are strong at the broken places. but those that will not break it kills. it kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. if you are none of those you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.