Books quote by William E Gladstone





A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387

387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood.  To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process .  In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
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turning points, The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 322

322  When we attempt to engineer a future event, we demand complete research, “complete” being defined as not exceeding nor falling short of all details related to our aim and obtainable within our time limit. There is much that must be excluded. Thus our research requires a strategic ignorance. But the research is still not the plan. We have yet to cull out of the totality of facts simple “turning points” calculated to accommodate human behavior, and of course only on condition that they increase the probability of our success. We often have to impose a simplicity upon a reality that does not in any way merit the slightest implication of being simplistic. If our standard of excellence places greater value on the successful execution of the strategy than on our talent for detailing the problem, then here too we condemn the intellect to a strategic ignorance. Of course, it is true that simplicity is not necessarily the same thing as clarity, and can often be its opposite...
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We more readily expound upon Good and Evil when we know nothing about them as consequences. Our personal bondage depends upon this preclusion. It is in fact the foundation of an authoritative structure to maintain an unexamined assumption that moral judgments themselves are removed from human mechanics. How much Evil in the world will simply vanish when we finally understand the conditions which make up our assumptions of “Good”? * Reality is shallow; Truth is deep.   The errors and deceptions that we stand upon must be dug through, and thus the illusion.  In the end, there will be no more truths; only reality.     * How the world really works … It is an experience of depth to respect the shallow.   All genuine elucidation feels rewarded by this inverse relation of the experience to the reality, of our increased potential by the simplification of what had heretofore existed beyond our comprehension. * We ignore pre-cognitive mec...
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