A Quote by Havelock Ellis

The prevalence of suicide, without doubt, is a test of height in civilization; it means that the population is winding up its nervous and intellectual system to the utmost point of tension and that sometimes it snaps.

Havelock Ellis

Quote Topics

Civilization Doubt Height Intellectual Means Nervous Point Population Snaps Sometimes Suicide System Tension Test Up Utmost Winding Winding Up Without

Quote Author

Havelock Ellis
British - Psychologist
February 2, 1859 - July 8, 1939

Tension means hurry, fear, doubt. Tension means a constant effort to protect, to be secure, to be safe. Tension means preparing for the tomorrow now, or for the afterlife - afraid tomorrow you will not be able to face the reality, so be prepared. Tension means the past that you have not lived really but only somehow bypassed; it hangs, it is a hangover, it surrounds you.

Rajneesh

The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness.

Tennessee Williams

... While nervous tension may be a component of stress, one can be stressed without feeling tension.

Gabor Mate

Sometimes a malfunctioning test setup actually gives the tested system a chance to show what it can do in an unrehearsed emergency. During a test of an Apollo escape system in the 1960s, the escape system successfully got the capsule clear of a malfunctioning test rocket.

Henry Spencer

Western Civilization has been in a state of decline since the Edwardian age, say 1910. That was the height of Greco-Roman European civilization. Then there was the First World War. That was the beginning of the end. That civilization has been in a decline ever since. But from the American triumphalist point of view our wonderful electronic revolution is really the forefront of an ongoing wonderful civilization.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

Antonio Tabucchi

Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide.

Karl A. Menninger

Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.

Thomas Carlyle

The techno-industrial system is exceptionally tough due to its so-called "democratic" structure and its resulting flexibility. Because dictatorial systems tend to be rigid, social tensions and resistance can be built up in them to the point where they damage and weaken the system and may lead to revolution. But in a "democratic" system, when social tension and resistance build up dangerously the system backs off enough, it compromises enough, to bring the tensions down to a safe level.

Theodore Kaczynski

Although self-control is inheritable and does run in families and has a genetic component, it's more like height than anything else. Height is one of the most strongly inherited traits that human beings have and yet when we improve the nutrition of the population everybody gets taller. So you can shift the entire population by an effective intervention.

Terrie Moffitt

Many countries today have begun the transition from an industrial wealth system and civilization to a knowledge-based system - without appreciating that a new wealth system is impossible without a corresponding new way of life.

Alvin Toffler

If I'm not nervous, if I don't have at least a little bit of the same self-doubt and anxious feelings I had when I started playing, then it will be time for me to go on. I must have that tension.

Jerry West

You don't have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system - a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars - for that is what their essential function is - to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies".

Noam Chomsky

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.