“Some critics claim to know what art has to be and do, and consider it their task to steer art along the path they have chosen. Others receive art gladly, and try to distinguish degrees of excellence.” KnowsTryingArtPathDegreesTasksClaimsExcellenceCriticsChosenSteers Author:Norbert Lynton
“The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.” DifferencesAttentionResponsibilityDemandAmbitionTasksClaimsChiefsPlentyMultitudesDaily Tasks Author:Eric Hoffer
“It is no wonder if, under the pressure of these possibilities of suffering, men are accustomed to moderate their claims to happiness - just as the pleasure principle itself, indeed, under the influence of the external world, changed into the more modest reality principle -, if a man thinks himself happy merely to have escaped unhappiness or to have survived his suffering, and if in general the task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background.” IfsThinkingMenWorldRealitySufferingPleasureWonderPrinciplesInfluencePossibilityChangedTasksClaimsPressureBackgroundsUnhappinessModestSurvivedAvoidingAccustomedModeratesObtaining Author:Sigmund Freud
“Complete your task. Seek no reward. Make no claims. Without faltering fully choose to do what you must do.” TasksClaimsRewardsFaltering Author:Laozi
“The beam in our own eye is harder to detect, although - or more accurately because - to detect it, and remove it, is vastly more important on elementary moral grounds, and commonly more important in terms of direct human consequences as well. Intellectuals have historically played a critical function in performing these tasks, and [Ivan] Illich is right to observe that claims to scientific expertise and special knowledge are often used as a device.” HumansWellsImportantEyeUsedTermMoralSpecialConsequenceTasksDirectFunctionClaimsHarderCriticalPerformingRemoveDevicesExpertiseBeam Author:Noam Chomsky
“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.” WorldHumansPhilosophyLastsIndividualDifficultHuman BeingsLove IsTasksTestsUltimateClaimsSakeProofPreparation Author:Rainer Maria Rilke