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Quote by Richard M. Weaver

“In the popular arena, one can tell ... that the average man ... imagines that an industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge. With what pathetic trust does he recite his facts! He has been told that knowledge is power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things.”

Quote by Richard M. Weaver

Book:Ideas Have Consequences

Work

Ideas Have Consequences

This book delves into the profound influence that ideas have on shaping societies and cultural norms over time. more

Author

Richard M. Weaver

Richard M. Weaver was an influential American philosopher, born on March 3, 1910, and died on April 1, 1963. He is known for his profound insights into language, culture, and political philosophy, particularly for his work 'The Language of Art', which explored the nature of language and its relationship to reality. more

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“The case of the Baconians is not won until it has been proved that the substitution of covetousness for wantlessness, or an ascending spiral of desires for a stable requirement of necessities, leads to a happier condition.”

Has Beens Desire Cases Conditions Stable Requirements Spirals Covetousness Substitution Ascending

Book:Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

Source: Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

“Man is constantly being assured that he has more power than ever before in history, but his daily experience is one of powerlessness. ... If he is with a business organization, the odds are great that he has sacrificed every other kind of independence in return for that dubious one known as financial.”

Ifs Men Kind Known Return Organization Independence Financial Odds Assured Powerlessness Dubious Daily Experience Business Organization

Author:Richard M. Weaver

“The prevailing conception is that education must be such as will enable one to acquire enough wealth to live on the plane of the bourgeoisie. That kind of education does not develop the aristocratic virtues. It neither encourages reflection nor inspires reverence for the good.”

Kind Doe Enough Wealth Virtue Inspire Reflection Planes Acquire Conception Reverence Prevailing Bourgeoisie Aristocratic

Book:Ideas Have Consequences

Source: Ideas Have Consequences

“In proportion as man approaches the outer rim, he becomes lost in details, and the more he is preoccupied with details, the less he can understand them.”

Men Lost Approach Details Proportion Rims

Book:Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

Source: Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

“It has been remarked that when one passes among the patients of the psychiatric ward, he encounters among the several sufferers every aspect of normal personality in morbid exaggeration. ... As one passes through the modern centers of enterprise and of higher learning, he is met with similar autonomies of development. ... The scientist, the technician, the scholar, who have left the One for the Many are puffed up with vanity over their ability to describe precisely some minute portion of the world. Men so obsessed with fragments can no more be reasoned with than other psychotics.”

“The conclusion, so vexatious to democracy, that wisdom and not popularity qualifies for rule may be forced upon us by the peril in atomic energy.”

May Energy Democracy Conclusion Popularity Peril Atomic Energy

Book:Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

Source: Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition

“Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, [Plato's Phaedrus] is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.”

Kind Form Spirit Ought Speech Asking Surface Expenses Provoking Plato Seriousness Mock Beneath The Surface Plato S Repartee

Book:The Ethics of Rhetoric

Source: The Ethics of Rhetoric

“Any utterance is a major assumption of responsibility, and the assumption that one can avoid that responsibility by doing something to language itself is one of the chief considerations of the Phaedrus.”

Language Responsibility Majors Chiefs Assumption Consideration Utterance

Book:The Ethics of Rhetoric

Source: The Ethics of Rhetoric

“Those who are guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam profess belief in something because its opposite cannot be proved ... In the realm where "prejudice" is now most an issue, it normally takes a form like this: you cannot prove by the method of statistics and quantitative measurement that men are not equal. Therefore all men are equal. ... You cannot prove again by the methods of science that one culture is higher than another. Therefore the culture of the Digger Indians is just a good as that of Muncie, Indiana, or thirteenth-century France.”

Men Form Culture Belief Issues Century Higher Prove Equal Opposites Prejudice Method Guilty France Realms Statistics Ads Measurement Indiana

Author:Richard M. Weaver

“There are some despotic governments so filled with a feeling of insecurity that they regard the free life of culture as a threat to their existence. ... On the other extreme is the kind of popular government which is so distrustful of all forms of distinction that it sees even in the cultivated individual a menace to its existence. Such states are likely to maintain a pressure which discourages cultural endeavor, although the pressure may be exerted through social channels.”

Kind May States Feelings Government Form Culture Individual Social Existence Pressure Regard Filled Threat Extremes Distinction Insecurity Endeavor Discouraging Menace Free Life

Author:Richard M. Weaver