A Quote by Baltasar Gracian

Man is born a barbarian, and only raises himself above the beast by culture.

Baltasar Gracian

Quote Topics

Above Barbarian Beast Born Culture Himself Man Only Raises

Quote Author

Baltasar Gracian
Spanish - Philosopher
January 8, 1601 - December 6, 1658

It is characteristic of the barbarian ... to insist upon seeing a thing "as it is." The desire testifies that he has nothing in himself with which to spiritualize it; the relation is one of thing to thing without the intercession of the imagination. Impatient of the veiling with which the man of higher type gives the world imaginative meaning, the barbarian and the Philistine, who is the barbarian living amid culture, demands the access of immediacy. Where the former wishes representation, the latter insists upon starkness of materiality, suspecting rightly that forms will mean restraint.

Richard M. Weaver

I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

Boris Pasternak

Wars, however frequent and destructive they may be, have never been able to kill entirely the intellectual and moral sense which raises man above the beast.

Elie Ducommun

A man without justice is a beast, and a man who would make himself a beast forgets the pain of being a man.

Timothy Leary

O execrable son! so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurped, from God not given. He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free.

John Milton

The man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetite.

Richard M. Weaver

There is no worse material poverty than one that does not allow for earning one’s bread and deprives one of the dignity of work. Youth unemployment, informality, and the lack of labor rights are not inevitable; they are the result of a previous social option, of an economic system that puts profit above man; if the profit is economic, to put it above humanity or above man, is the effect of a disposable culture that considers the human being in himself as a consumer good, which can be used and then discarded.

Pope Francis

It appears to Nietzsche that the modern age has produced for imitation three types of man ... First, Rousseau's man, the Titan who raises himself ... and in his need calls upon holy nature. Then Goethe's man ... a spectator of the world ... Third Schopenhauer's man ... voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth.

Georg Brandes

Ignorance is servitude, because as a man thinks, so he is; a man who does not think for himself and allows himself to be guided by the thought of another is like the beast led by a halter.

Jose Rizal

A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.

John Stuart Mill

How do cultures differ from one another? Above all, in their customs. Tell me how you dress, how you act, what are your habits, which gods you honor, and I will tell you who you are. Man not only creates culture, he carries it around with him. Man is culture.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The primitive magician, the medicine man or shaman is not only a sick man, he is above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself.