people-from-vienna

"The real crisis through which Marxism is passing is not due to this relaxation of intellectual discipline on the part of some of those who call themselves followers of Marx. Unfortunately, the habit of praising or blaming without knowledge of the subject is becoming increasingly common to men of all parties today. This is not due to the failure of this or that doctrine, but to the crisis through which our whole civilisation is passing. At the same time this regrettable tendency adds greatly to the confusion in which all the sociological disputes of our day are taking place."

"Let us define what we mean by Marxism. Is it the doctrine of Marx and Engels? Or is it the movements to which that doctrine has given birth, and which, rightly or wrongly, claim to be Marxist? To what extent are these movements actually inspired by Marxism, and to what extent have they caused it to develop, sometimes reforming, sometimes deforming it? Are these movements still really Marxist in the classic sense? Or do perhaps both friends and enemies of Marxism often harbour a distorted conception of Marx’s original theories? We must therefore ask ourselves whether the so-called crisis of Marxism is not in large measure a crisis of differing posthumous interpretations of Marxism. Karl Marx died in 1883 and Friedrich Engels in 1895. Although a number of their followers have developed their doctrines and provided important supplementary analyses of the modifications experienced by capitalism in the course of the twentieth century, the results of these labours have hardly affected the movement as a whole. In fact, as the movement grew in size, the assimilation even of the ideas of Marx and Engels themselves, which were naturally better known, became slower, more fragmentary and more superficial. In accordance with historical conditions which obviously differed considerably as between country and country, each movement took what best suited it from the original doctrine, and applied its choice (very rarely the Marxist method itself) to its own particular situation."

"“How then can you research history?” “We don’t use the same methods as our applied among those of the Evening Countries—or rather, those which were used there. The fundaments of those methods were logical conclusions and empirical research: excavations, the study of archives, the deciphering of inscriptions. These sources are deceiving: they can have different explanations, are vague, can be ambiguous and are generally superficial. We try to approach true history along clearer and more secure paths: by looking with the inner, sympathetic senses, using our minds to draw spiritual conclusions, not logical but intuitive ones. In this way a clear, faultless view of whatever happened in world history, forward as well as backward, is shown to the Blessed among us in a series of pure images.”"

"Extraordinary, and yet when we look in the mirror of a higher possibility it seems understandable, even self-evident."

"Your history has no age, and your age has no history."

"It is the politician’s profession to invent facts."

"Hope and curiosity are the two big powers which force us to continue our existence in repulsive circumstances. It is exactly our not-knowing that is the thrusting power behind our most daring adventures, the constant source of our action. A man who has seen all the twists and turns of destiny and its complete unity no longer would have the courage to do anything about it. He who knows can’t act anymore."

"Many things no longer appear as “miracles” to us, if we decide to look at them through the eyes of practical physics."

"Strangely enough most people only do sensible things if they are ordered to."

"[...] I do not separate between work and life."

"The time when physically nothing is happening is equally important."

"“The most superficial scanning of the statements produced in connection with the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 provides abundant evidence of the continuing power of the jihad concept in its original drastic and military intent. Fighting the unbeliever is a religious duty of the collectivity and secures religious merit; however ‘secular’ the issues, the simple fact of their involving a confrontation between Muslim and non-Muslim suffices for popular sentiment, and hence for governmental direction, to identify the armed dispute as religious warfare. Denials of this fact by the authorities when they address themselves to a Western audience have no meaning beyond constituting an attempt, inevitable in the present international situation, at making their point in a manner likely to be acceptable to a forum averse to the spirit of the religious crusade and altogether disposed to take for granted the separation between religious sentiment and political action.…What is truly and unqualifiedly reprehensible lies elsewhere. It is to be found in the projection of internal Western self-criticism on to the plane of comparative culture studies, in the reification of Western complexes, in the conferring of objective existence to what is little more than a stage setting for a Western cathartic monologue. Psychological and political needs, anguish kept alive by the weight of four dead centuries, pride and ambition supported by dependence on loaned weapons, they combine quaintly to sustain this deliberate illusionism sprung from history undigested and, almost typical of a faltering denial of reality, proclaimed as a new moral gospel. Transferred to the printed page this mood assumes various shapes of which perhaps the most objectionable—to those promoted to cultural donors as much as to those demoted to recipients, for it is the inadequate system of coordinates which inevitably oversimplifies historical process and works offensive injustice to both artificially constituted ‘parties’—is to be found in such Western writing as tries to buy friendship by self-debasement.…. Whatever the motivation, learning or stylistic skill, it is this kind of scholarship and parascholarship which is reducing the incentive of the societies most in need of them for self-comprehension and more than momentary self-esteem to identify with modern historical scholarship, regardless of the constellation of the hour of publication.…Self-criticism in the Anglo-Saxon and French style, itself a fairly recent phenomenon of great pedagogical value, must not be abused to mislead. Why accept anyone on his own terms unless there is reason for accepting the terms? This goes first of all for ourselves; but only arrogance would exempt the others.”"

"Well, hardly ever. Unless the individual happens to be oneself. The Sunday Timess list ends with one living relic. On the face of it, the appearance of the name Carl Djerassi is patently ridiculous by any criterion but one: as a surrogate for the Pill."

"... I got to writing poetry out of revenge — self-pity and revenge."

"In the cover story of its 12 September 1999 issue, the London Sunday Times Magazine featured the Top Thirty persons of the present millennium. ..."

"In the final analysis, in science, unlike art, the individual hardly matters."

"The list was heavily skewed in favor of science and technology. ..."

"Shame is closely connected to sexuality. The naked body itself is still as politically charged as nothing else."

"Porno ist nie nicht politisch. (Porn is never not political.)"

"Feminist porn productions show that female lust and the sexual well-being of women can be very much the focus of porn - and that it can be female-positive, gender-aware and at the same time male-friendly."

"Wieser is usually credited with the idea that the cost of any economic decision is the next best alternative foregone in making that decision. In addition, Wieser – following Menger – saw the production process as unfolding through time where value flows up from lower-order goods to the higher-order goods used in producing them, and a stream of goods and services flows down from high-order goods to the lower-order goods we consume. The process of deriving the value of producer goods from the value of the resulting consumer goods is referred to as imputation. Hayek’s early work in technical economics was precisely on this issue and it is through studying this process of imputation that he became sensitised to the misleading influence of equilibrium theorising with regard to the complexity of this economic adjustment process through time."

"Dabei ist grad der Staat das größte Übel, das alle Menschen seit Jahrhunderten versaut; und jeder einzelne von uns ist nur ein Dübel, in den der Staat den Nagel seiner Allmacht haut."

"Gott denkt in den Genies, träumt in den Dichtern und schläft in den übrigen Menschen."

"In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt: it breeds votes."

"Obviously something is wrong with the entire argument of "obviousness"."

"I have always stressed that methodology is intuition reconstructed in tranquility."

"It is not so much that he was an American sociologist... as it was that he determined what American sociology would be... What made Paul unique was not his involvement with ideas or his involvement with people, but his ability to stir the two together."

"Matters often look bad, but somehow they always stop short of being disastrous. True, as in other fields, especially in social legislation, it was often an accidental event which triggered an improvement. But this would not have happened if a continuous stream of criticism had not kept us prepared to take advantage of such opportunities. It is the tragic story of the cultural crusader in a mass society that he cannot win, but we would be lost without him."

"[My goal] is to produce Paul Lazarsfelds."

"Heider began by assuming that just as objects have enduring qualities that determine their appearances, so people have stable psychological characteristics that determine their behavior."

"The action outcome, x , may then be said to be dependent upon a combination of effective personal force and effective environmental force, thus:"

"One might say psychological processes such as motives, intentions, sentiments, etc., are the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior and expression in many variable ways."

"Personal causality, refers to instances in which p causes x intentionally. That is to say, the action is purposive."

"In the basic case, where the person is concerned with the dispositional properties of his surrounding environment, the choice is between external attribution and internal (self) attribution."

"Man is usually not content simply to register the observables that surround him; he needs to refer them as far as possible to the invariances of his environment.. The underlying causes of events, especially the motives of other persons, are the invariances of the environment that are relevant to him; they give meaning to what he experiences and it is these meanings that are recorded in his life space and are precipitated as the reality of the environment to which he then reacts."

"[Unlike objects, people are] usually perceived as action centers and as such can do something to us. They can benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or harm them. Persons have abilities, wishes, and sentiments; they can act purposefully, and can perceive or watch us. They are systems having an awareness of their surroundings and their conduct refers to this environment, an environment that sometimes includes ourselves."

"Central to Heider’s entire theoretical position is the proposition that man perceives behavior as being caused, and that the causal locus can be either in the perceiver or in the environment."

"How do we search for the causal structure of interpersonal events? According to Heider, we do so by reliance upon attributions to the environment (external factors) or to something about the other person (internal factors)."

"I love him and Maria does too, and so thank you, Kurt."

"You must not expect the United Nations to accomplish miracles. We are made up of sovereign nations. We can only accomplish what our member nations allow us to accomplish."

"I do not expect miracles or spectacular successes - sound political progress is seldom based in either - but I am convinced that the United Nations provides the best road to the future for those who have confidence in our capacity to shape our own fate on this planet."

"As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organization of the 147 member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of the immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step."

"We are men and women from many lands, representing a rich variety of cultures. And we have been brought together to work in a great common cause: the survival and progress of mankind. The concept of unity in diversity ... underlies our various pursuits at the United Nations."

"Selbstverständlich gibt es keine Kollektivschuld, trotzdem möchte ich mich als Staatsoberhaupt der Republik Österreich für jene Verbrechen entschuldigen, die von Österreichern im Zeichen des Nationalsozialismus begangen wurden."

"Culture can flourish only under the protection of a society with aristocratic characteristics."

"Every magnitude, every dimension, requires a new configuration."

"The power and force of stone reside in its mass, its weight, and its density."

"The search continues for the absolute model-form which shall do justice to every dimension without loss of inner force."

"What nevertheless subsists is the desire of an absolute ideal form, a form which can adapt itself to any setting and to any scale."

"The hardness and immobility of material gave me more satisfaction tan true-to-life representations."