Discourse

"Controversy equalizes fools and wise men — and the fools know it."

"I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive."

"Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns."

"Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!... Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did."

"CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet."

"The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint."

"I discovered the works of Euler and my perception of the nature of mathematics underwent a dramatic transformation. I was de-Bourbakized, stopped believing in sets, and was expelled from the Cantorian paradise. I still believe in abstraction, but now I know that one ends with abstraction, not starts with it. I learned that one has to adapt abstractions to reality and not the other way around. Mathematics stopped being a science of theories but reappeared to me as a science of numbers and shapes."

"Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole."

"Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations."

"Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words will be corroded too."

"For me, abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. I'll go further and say that abstraction is nearer my heart. I prefer to see with closed eyes."

"Abstract terms (however useful they may be in argument) should be discarded in meditation, and the mind should be fixed on the particular and the concrete, that is, on the things themselves."

"The reliance on the abstract is thus not a result of an over-estimation but rather of an insight into the limited powers of our reason. It is the over-estimation of the powers of reason which leads to the revolt against the submission to abstract rules. Constructivist rationalism rejects the demand for this discipline of reason because it deceives itself that reason can directly master all the particulars; and it is thereby led to a preference for the concrete over the abstract, the particular over the general, because its adherents do not realize how much they thereby limit the span of true control by reason. The hubris of reason manifests itself in those who believe that they can dispense with abstraction and achieve a full mastery of the concrete and thus positively master the social process."

"A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one’s own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias."

"An abstraction is one thing that represents several real things equally well."

"In all reprehensions, observe to express rather thy love than thy anger; and strive rather to convince than exasperate: but if the matter do require any special indignation, let it appear to be the zeal of a displeased friend, rather than the passion of a provoked enemy."

"Many people get a sense of savage satisfaction out of denouncing those who are better educated than they are or more successful."

"Nothing is easier than fault-finding. No talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, is required to set up in the grumbling business. But those that are moved by a genuine desire to do good have little time for murmuring or complaint."

"Complaining as well as faultfinding and reactivity strengthen the ego's sense of boundary and separateness on which it's survival depends. But they also strengthen the ego in another way by giving it a feeling of superiority on which it thrives. It may not be immediately apparent how complaining, say, about a traffic jam, about politicians, about the “greedy wealthy” or the “lazy unemployed,” or your colleagues or ex-spouse, men or women, can give you a sense of superiority. Here is why. When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong. There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right."

"At one end of this scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said, “Why to do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)"

"See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."

"From mad dogs and grumbling professors may we all be delivered, and may we never take the complaint from either of them."

"Some people are never content with their lot, let what will happen. Clouds and darkness are over their heads, alike whether it rain or shine. To them every incident is an accident, and every accident a calamity."

"I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!"

"Never complain if you don't have a better solution."

"Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men."

"Let him alone and let him curse; for the Lord has bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look on my distress, and the Lord will repay me with good for this cursing of me today."

"When you see anyone complaining of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper, know that the complainant is bad-tempered, forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person, because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured."

"Surely, human is created uneasy; Murmuring when misfortune afflicts him, while selfish when success befalls him..."

"I have noticed this, that when a man is full of the Holy Ghost he is the very last man to be complaining of other people."

"The message that really pisses me off is like, "Well, women in the Middle East are getting their genitalia cut, so you should just shut up." That is completely wrong. The point is we're not all truly free until we're all free, and the women who have mouthpieces need to speak up for the women in other places, and for men too."

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

"Most people are indifferent, unless their self-interest is at stake. Then there are the chronic complainers."

"No one ever kicks a dead dog."

"It rhymes with complaining."

"There is an unfortunate disposition in a man to attend much more to the faults of his companions which offend him, than to their perfections which please him."

"Every one must see daily instances of people who complain from a mere habit of complaining."

"Complaints … encourage those who hear our complaints to behave like those we complain about. Once divulged, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable. … It is better to praise the favors others have done for you, so as to win still more of them. When you tell how those absent have favored you, you are asking those present to do the same."

"Nothing is feebler than the indolent rebellion of complaint..."

"The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures."

"The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves."

"A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure — critics are ready-made."

"No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another."

"A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him."

""Censure," says a late ingenious author, "is the tax a man plays for being eminent." It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping it, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of comitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph."

"If you get your head above the crowd, you're going to be criticized. So get used to the idea."

"Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see, for the light is all about you, and it is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond anything of which men have ever dreamt, for which they have ever prayed, and it is for ever and for ever."

"Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent."

"We must not stint Our necessary actions, in the fear To cope malicious censurers."

"No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong, Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?"