Quotessence
Home / Topics / Dialectics Quotes

Dialectics Quotes

Browse 101 quotes about Dialectics.

Related topics

World

Dialectics Quotes

“A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.”

MadeStillsConsciousnessMoralVirtueWrittenMoralityDiscoveryCriticismCaughtCommittedLustIdolsIdolatryDialectics
Book:As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
Create image

“History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process”

ThinkingWayLongTwoCertainProcessViewsStudyReflectionOppositesThirdsBasesDepthPoint Of ViewAriseChainsTensionProposalWay Of ThinkingAccommodateHegelDialecticsTwo OppositesStudying History
Author:Jostein Gaarder
Create image

“I never sat down and wrote, but what I do is kind of act as a dramaturge for the piece. I am sitting with the writers. I'm discussing ideas with the writers and concepts. We're debating and having a dialectic where we are taking a lot of different ideas and trying to synthesize them into the right idea. I'm very much a part of that process. That's my job as the director.”

TryingKindIdeasDifferentJobsProcessPiecesDirectorsSittingConceptsDown AndSatDiscussingDialecticsDifferent IdeasRight Ideas
Author:Larry Charles
Create image

“All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number. This truth (the only one) is for the strong alone. Weak-nerved minds insist on a finite universe, a last number; they need, in Nietzsche's words, "the crutches of certainty". The weak-nerved lack the strength to include themselves in the dialectic syllogism.”

InspirationalNeedsMindArtTodayLastsUniverseLiteratureStrongProcessNumbersTomorrowTruth IsWeakEssenceErrorsFinalsCertaintyFiniteCrutchesDialectics
Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin
Create image

“After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't it - but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to solidify a new order.”

NeedsShouldDifferentProblemOrderNaturalUnitedViewsEnemyGroupsRevolutionSolutionsShould HaveReformRevolutionarySplitsDialecticsDifferent ViewsSortingSorting Out
Author:John Lennon
Create image

“In some ways I consider myself more Chinese, because I live in San Francisco, which is becoming a predominantly Asian city. I avoid falling into the black-and-white dialectic in which most of America still seems trapped. I have always recognized that, as an American, I am in relationship with other parts of the world; that I have to measure myself against the Pacific, against Asia. Having to think of myself in relationship to that horizon has liberated me from the black-and-white checkerboard.”

ThinkingWorldWayStillsSeemsAmericaFallBlackWhiteCitiesBecomingChineseHorizonTrappedBlack And WhiteAsiaAsianSan FranciscoLiberatedPacificDialecticsRelationships With OthersCheckerboard
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Pleasures First look from morning's window The rediscovered book Fascinated faces Snow, the change of the seasons The newspaper The dog Dialectics Showering, swimming Old music Comfortable shoes Comprehension New music Writing, planting Traveling Singing Being friendly”

WritingFirstsLooksBookFacesPleasureMorningDogComfortableSingingWindowSeasonsShoesNewspapersSnowFriendlySwimmingFascinatedComprehensionNew MusicDialecticsOld MusicMusic WritingComfortable Shoes
Author:Bertolt Brecht
Create image

“In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.”

FirstsLooksPhilosophyHandsSchoolPassionSpeakLanguageSawsAliveIntellectualAspectAbsolutesRemainsPhilosopherArguingMysticismSpheresAssuredNeatMysticLovableUnattainableDialecticsDiagramsFirst Hand Experience
Book:Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness
Create image

“Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her.”

ChristianValuesSilencePiecesSkillsProfoundPhilosopherArguingEmbarrassedTornMartyrDialecticsAlexandriaOld Values
Book:Dream of Scipio
Create image

“I have often had cause to feel that my hands are cleverer than my head. That is a crude way of characterizing the dialectics of experimentation. When it is going well, it is like a quiet conversation with Nature. One asks a question and gets an answer, then one asks the next question and gets the next answer. An experiment is a device to make Nature speak intelligibly. After that, one only has to listen.”

WayFeelsWellsHandsScienceNextAsksSpeakCausesNatureAnswersListeningQuietConversationExperimentsDevicesCrudeExperimentationScientific MethodDialectics
Author:George Wald
Create image

“Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn't every narrative lead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytelling always a way of searching for one's origin, speaking one's conflicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred?”

IfsWayStoriesLawFatherLiteraturePleasureConflictHatredStorytellingNarrativeTendernessEnteringDialecticsOedipus
Book:How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces
Create image

“Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although he may be permitted to be an intellectual.”

PeopleWorldShouldMayLastsNatureViewsOpinionNovelIntellectualIntelligentContrarySillyNovelistsDialectics
Book:You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess
Create image

“Whenever a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information - never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped the real nature of good - he arrives at the very end of the intellectual world.”

WorldPersonsRealEndsReasonHelpingRealityProcessSimpleInformationPureIntellectualIndependentStrivePursuitPlatoStrifeSensuousDialectics
Book:Republic
Create image

“The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.”

WorldTogetherImaginationAcceptingModernCenturyMarkErasInevitableContinuingExploitationOppressedModern WorldTwentieth CenturyRefusalClimaxAssertivenessDialecticsModern Era
Book:The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, With a New Prologue
Create image

“Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.”

WritingMindLongSelfTodayCultureChallengesProgressImpossibleStageEqualElementsIntellectualCriticismAbsolutesFinalsCriticalSatisfiedContemplationHolocaustPreparingBarbarismBarbaricDialectics
Author:Theodor Adorno
Create image

“Science and Technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.”

DreamPastFormValuesIndividualMemoriesConsciousnessTechnologyOur LivesAtheismHabitExpectationsTraditionResponsePositive AtheismRevengeMythUnconsciousCollectivesScience And TechnologyDialecticsCollective Unconscious
Author:Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Create image

“Now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth...but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.”

MenWorldFirstsDreamLostUnderstandingTermWealthEnemyBalanceEqualFirst TimeBuiltEnormousManifestationEmpiresCapabilityUnbelievableManipulateMagnitudeDialectics
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
Create image

“How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?”

IfsMenLooksWarReasonFactsArgumentShipsFormerLatterPreferenceEloquentCondemnationFeatsGhastlyDialecticsCargo
Book:Triangle: The currents of space; Pebble in the sky; The stars, like dust
Create image

“Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us-simpatico dudes that we are-while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time-while the other dudes hold onto the wire. Which is not to say that no one has tried to dispense with wires. Many have, and sometimes it works-but it doesn't feel like jazz when it does. The music simply drifts away into the stratosphere of formal dialectic, beyond our social concerns.”

IfsFeelsWellsDoeTwoSometimesMightWould BeTogetherSongSocialFourNiceConcernJazzWork OutComplicatedBeing NiceFormalNever QuitWireAutonomousDialecticsSimpatico
Author:Dave Hickey
Create image