Quotes & Notes

High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.

If men are to have free play for their creative impulses, they must be liberated from sordid cares by a certain measure of security.

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of—and this is the paradox—specialists in those matters…. [T]his very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his specialty.

It remains true that the greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not from those who are driven by necessity.