Cultural Critics

"The principles of great men illuminate the universe."

"The most important development of the Confucian School was in the teachings of Mencius (372–289 B.C.). After the death of Confucius, the teachings were divided into two schools, one of Hsuntse and one of Mencius, the former believing in the wickedness of human nature and the necessity of restraint, and the latter believing in the sheer expansiveness of the good heart of man. Mencius said, "The great man is one who has not lost the heart of a child." He started out from the assumption that man has the innate capacity for good and loves what is good, that it is through corruption that man deteriorates, and that therefore the essence of self-cultivation, of preserving one's moral character, consists merely in "finding the lost heart of the child." This has become the orthodox school. Mencius has been given a place next only to Confucius, and it is common to speak of Confucian doctrines as "the teachings of Kung-Meng," meaning Confucius (Kung) and Mencius (Meng)."

"The superior man has three things in which he delights, and to be ruler over the kingdom is not one of them. That his father and mother are both alive, and that the condition of his brothers affords no cause for anxiety;—this is one delight. That, when looking up, he has no occasion for shame before Heaven, and, below, he has no occasion to blush before men;—this is a second delight. That he can get from the whole kingdom the most talented individuals, and teach and nourish them;—this is the third delight."

"大人者，不失其赤子之心者也"

"The sense of mercy is found in all men; the sense of shame is found in all men; the sense of respect is found in all men; the sense of right and wrong is found in all men."

"民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕。"

"The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom. Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves."

"They who accord with Heaven are preserved, and they who rebel against Heaven perish."

"Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do."

"How lamentable is it to neglect the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it."

"The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind."

"If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good."

"If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land."

"Those who are humane achieve glory. Those who are inhumane suffer disgrace."

"He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death."

"At forty, I had attained the unperturbed mind."

"Never has there been one possessed of complete sincerity who did not move others. Never has there been one who had not sincerity who was able to move others."

"The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind."

"Tsze-Kung asked Confucius, saying, "Master, are you a sage?" Confucius answered him: "A sage is what I cannot rise to. I learn without satiety, and teach without being tired." Tsze-Kung said: "You learn without satiety: that shows your wisdom. You teach without being tired: that shows your benevolence. Benevolent and wise:— Master, you a sage.""

"The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart."

"Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path."

"The feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in distress."

"Mencius went to see King Huei of Liang. The king said, "Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied, "Why must your Majesty use that word "profit"? What I am provided with, are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.""

"Benevolence brings under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots."

"He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature."

"I’ve already given you the whole explanation of how that came about. It happened because it was going to happen. All other explanations for anything are superfluous. All other explanations for anything."

"Actually, there are never motives behind actions. All actions are fixed. What we call motives evidently are rationalizations by the helpless observing consciousness, which is intelligent enough to smell an event coming—and, since it cannot avert the event, instead cooks up reasons for wanting it to happen...or ascribes it to the malice of God or man."

"We cannot count upon the secret being kept. It’s a fact of nature, and as somebody or other remarked long ago, Nature is a blabbermouth; ask the right question, and you’ll always get the answer."

"“The motto of the bureau,” Weinbaum said, “is, ‘sometimes something works.’”"

"The technicians thought I was crazy. Now, five months later, I’ve proved it."

"“Something tells me that this isn’t going to be as simple as it looks.” “What is?” Wald said, raising his eyebrows. “Nothing, of course. But hope springs eternal in the human spleen.”"

"We often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as n-dimensional—it’s like modern sex, any number may be played with."

"One death is as good as another, if death is what you are courting."

"It is written: That given any one of a thousand million possible paths, life will take them all; That worlds which will support life will give birth to it; That worlds which cannot support intelligent life will be colonized; And that where both can take place, both will take place. It is written that this is what the vast, unknowing interstellar stage is for: To be given consciousness and purpose while its gift of existence lasts. It is written: That this is a random process; That in the end all will be darkness and silence again; But that while it lasts, life spreads through it, to make it aware of its own vastness and beauty, which otherwise it can never have known. This is a gift; but the Giver is unknown. That too is written."

"No exercise of will can make any of us other than what we are, or more than marginally better than who we are."

"He was getting to be a little old for combat or for princesses, but what was worse, he had become a lot more cynical without having become even slightly the wiser."

"The Venetians had never been more than formally and outwardly allegiant to the Church from at least their second treaty with Islam in the mid-fifteenth century. The highest pinnacle of their ethics was that of dealing fairly with each other, and since there was at the same time no sweeter music to Venetian ears than the scream of outrage from the outsider who had discovered too late that he had been cheated, this left them little that they felt they ought to say in the confessional. Most of them seem to regard the now obvious downfall of almost all of human civilization as a plot to divert the tourist trade to some other town—probably Istanbul, which they still referred to as Constantinople."

"He wore the expression of a man who has heard all this before, and is not enjoying it any better the second time."

"This senseless advance of expensively trained and equipped men to certain and complete slaughter—men who as usual not only had no idea of what they were dying for, but had been actively misled about it—made about as much military sense as the Siege of Sevastopol or the Battle of the Marne. Certainly it was spectacular, but intellectually it was not even very interesting."

"They had all been things, not people, to each other, which after all is the only sensible and fruitful attitude in a thing-dominated world. (Except, of course, for Father Domenico, whose desire to prevent anybody from accomplishing anything, chiefly by wringing his hands, had to be written off as the typical, incomprehensible attitude of the mystic—a howling anachronism in the modern world, and predictably ineffectual.) And in point of fact none of them—not even Father Domenico—could fairly be said to have failed. Instead, they had all been betrayed. Their plans and operations had all depended implicitly upon the existence of God—even Jack, who had entered Positano as an atheist, had been reluctantly forced to grant that—and in the final pinch, He had turned out to have been not around any more after all. If this shambles was anyone’s fault, it was His."

"“Impossible!” Father Domenico cried, though choking with the dust of the exploded crucifix. “It is written that in that war you will at last nature conquered and chained!”"

"“Though the wicked may hide, the claws of crabs are dangerous people in bridges,” Father Selahny intoned abruptly. As was the case with all his utterances, the group would doubtless find out what this one meant only after sorting out its mixed mythologies and folklores, and long after it was too late to do anything about it."

"One thing you learn fast in the munitions business is that it’s a very good idea to stay off battlefields."

"“Look at it this way for a moment, Dr. Ware. Very roughly, there are only two general kinds of men who go into the munitions business—those without consciences, who see the business as an avenue to a great fortune, eventually to be used for something else, like Jack here—and of course there’s a subclass of those, people who do have consciences but can’t resist the money anyhow, or the knowledge, rather like Dr. Hess.” Both men stirred, but apparently both decided not to dispute their portraits. “The second kind is made up of people like me—people who actually take pleasure in the controlled production of chaos and destruction. Not sadists primarily, except in the sense that every dedicated artist is something of a sadist, willing to countenance a little or a lot of suffering—not only his own, but other people’s—for the sake of the end product.” “A familiar type, to be sure,” Ware said with a lopsided grin. “I think it was the saintly Robert Frost who said that a painting by Whistler was worth any number of old ladies.” “Engineers are like this too,” Baines said."

"A common thief with a gun in his hand isn’t half as dangerous as an engineer with a stick of dynamite."

"You’ll remember I told you I was interested in the history of science. That involves trying to understand why there wasn’t any science for so long, and why it went into eclipse almost every time it was rediscovered. I think I know why now. I think the human mind goes through a sort of cycle of fear. It can only take so much accumulated knowledge, and then it panics, and starts inventing reasons to throw everything over and go back to a Dark Age…every time with a new, invented mystical reason."

"Perhaps indeed Jehovah is not dead, But mere retir’d, withdrawn or otherwise Contracted hath, as Zohar subtle saith, His Essence Infinite; and, Epicurean, waits The outcome vast with vast indifference."

"The first thing a psychologist learns is to keep her mouth shut around laymen."

"In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!"

"“Your concept is a tremendous network of inconsistencies.” “In what way?” the countess said, not very much interested. “It seems to be based on reverence for the young, and an extremely patient and protective attitude toward their physical and mental welfare. Yet you make them live in these huge caves, utterly out of contact with the natural world, and you teach them to be afraid of death—which of course makes them a little insane, because there is nothing anybody can do about death. It is like teaching them to be afraid of the second law of thermodynamics, just because living matter sets that law aside for a very brief period."