A Quote by Jacques Ellul

This is where each individual must decide for himself. The essential thing is the decision to challenge the modern state, which without this small group of protesters will be checked by neither brake, value, nor reason.

Jacques Ellul

Quote Topics

Brake Challenge Checked Decide Decision Each Each Individual Essential Group Himself Individual Modern Must Neither Nor Reason Small Small Group State Thing Value Which Will Without

Quote Author

Jacques Ellul
French - Philosopher
January 6, 1912 - May 19, 1994

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.

Johann Georg Hamann

We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide

Alan Watts

A free society that allows each individual to seek his or her own selfish ends (without deliberately trying to harm anyone else) will produce a state in which everyone's interest is optimized without any individual knowing in advance what that state might be.

Stuart Kauffman

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.

Ayn Rand

Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.

John Dewey

But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best.

Thomas Jefferson

The State is the curse of the individual... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing.

Henrik Ibsen

God is neither manifest nor hidden; He is neither revealed nor unrevealed; there are no words to tell that which He is. He is without form, without quality, without decay.

Rabindranath Tagore

How beautifully is it ordered, that as many thousands work for one, so must every individual bring his labor to make the whole! The highest is not to despise the lowest, nor the lowest to envy the highest; each must live in all and by all. Who will not work neither shall he eat. So God has ordered that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other, and bear each other's burdens.

George Augustus Henry Sala

There is no hope for the world unless and until we formulate, accept and state publicly a true moral code of individualism, based on man's inalienable right to live for himself. Neither to hurt nor to serve his brothers, but to be independent of them in his function and in his motive. Neither to sacrifice them for himself nor to sacrifice himself for them.

Ayn Rand

Neither numbers nor powers nor wealth nor learning nor eloquence nor anything else will prevail, but purity, living the life, in one word, anubhuti, realisation. Let there be a dozen such lion-souls in each country, lions who have broken their own bonds, who have touched the Infinite, whose whole soul is gone to Brahman, who care neither for wealth nor power nor fame, and these will be enough to shake the world.

Swami Vivekananda

She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

Margaret Sanger

Neither you nor I nor Einstein nor the Supreme Court of the United States is brilliant enough to reach an intelligent decision on any problem without first getting the facts

Dale Carnegie

There may be different channels of approach, yes. For not all peoples walked in the field when the wheat was ripe. Neither did all stand at the tomb when Lazarus was called forth. Neither were they all present when He walked on the water, nor when He fed the five thousand, nor when He hung on the Cross. Yet each experience answered, and does answer to something within each individual soul-entity. For each soul is a corpuscle in the body of God.

Edgar Cayce

The establishment of inner harmony is to be attained neither in the past nor in the future, but where the past and future meet, which is the now. When you have attained that point, neither future nor past, neither birth nor death, neither time nor space exist. It is that NOW which is liberation, which is perfect harmony, to which the men of the past and the men of the future must come.