English - Poet | December 4, 1893 - June 12, 1968
The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.
Herbert Read
PersonalityI AmSocietyIndependent
Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
ProgressSocietyDegreeWithin
If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.
LifeShortIndividualMechanicalHis
You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to be true.
PersonalityManThinkYouBe True
But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.
CultureQualityStepProcessParent
I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.
DoubtEvolutionStageMankindHigher
It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.
ProcessPlaceFirstIndividualTake
Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.
PastIntellectualEmotionalBelong
Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.
LifeProblemsSolutionFindForget
Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.
MoralityAnimalsOutBeenEvenForm
I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.
NatureI AmModernGoingLawsClaim
What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.
SocietyYouBuildWithoutMystical
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Herbert Read quotes