Herbert Read Quotes
"These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society, Army, Body, United)
"The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society, Personality)
"The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Intelligence, Society, Being, Living, Reason, Right)
"The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Attitude, Belief, Positive, Despair, Today)
"The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society)
"The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Work, Art, Symbol)
"The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Nature, Growth, Balance, Efficiency, Law)
"The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Being, Care, Sin, Spirit, Ugliness)
"The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word."
- Herbert Read
(Related: First, Meaning, Word)
"The sense of historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot, however, be compromised."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Feeling, Rectitude, Sense)
"The sensitive artist knows that a bitter wind is blowing."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Artist, Wind)
"The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Happiness, May)
"There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country."
- Herbert Read
(Related: People, Capitalism, Country, Marxism, Socialism)
"Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Experience, Progress, Existence, Richness)
"To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Equality, Power, Values, Wealth, Freedom, Nationalism, World)
"We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Religion, Civilization, Christianity, May, Will)
"What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society)
"You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to be true."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Desire, Man, Personality)
"The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Power, Quality, Civilization, Wealth, Artists, Culture, Military, Poets, Worth)
"Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Past)
"A man of personality can formulate ideals, but only a man of character can achieve them."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Character, Ideals, Man, Personality)
"That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Art, Vision, Economics, Man, Measure, Philosophy, Spiritual)
"But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Quality, Civilization, Culture)
"Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Past)
"Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Life, Forget, Problems, Solution, Unconscious)
"I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Nature, Laws, State)
"I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Religion, Authority, Supernatural)
"I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society)
"I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Doubt, Evolution, Mankind)
"If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Life, Corporate)
"In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Evolution, Mankind)
"It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Art, Society, Contradiction)
"It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society, Religion, Old, Russia, Socialism, Will, Years)
"It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place."
- Herbert Read
(Related: First)
"Man is everywhere still in chains."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Man)
"Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Religion, Morality, Animals)
"My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Success, War, Discipline, First, Value)
"I know of no better name than Anarchism."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Name)
"Art is pattern informed by sensibility."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Art, Sensibility)