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Philistines Quotes

“Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: 'Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”

CultureWealthClassPhilistinesPhilistinism
Book:Culture and Anarchy
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“In our political system everybody is comforted. Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the influence of the Barbarians, and who depend on their favour, sing the praises of the Barbarians, and say all the smooth things that can be said of them. With Mr. Tennyson, they celebrate 'the great broad−shouldered genial Englishman,' with his 'sense of duty,' his 'reverence for the laws,' and his 'patient force,' who saves us from the 'revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a schoolboy's barring out,' which upset other and less broad−shouldered nations. Our guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who have to look to their favour, tell the Philistines how 'all the world knows that the great middle class of this country supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done,' and congratulate them on their 'earnest good sense, which penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives to conventional illusions their true value.' Our guides who look to the favour of the Populace, tell them that 'theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy, and the readiest powers of action.”

CultureClassBarbariansPopulismPhilistinesPhilistinismPopulacePandering
Book:Culture and Anarchy
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“Harsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the great classes of the community; but these things so evidently come from a hostile class, and are so manifestly dictated by the passions and prepossessions of a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they make no serious impression on those at whom they are launched, but slide easily off their minds. For instance, when the Reform League orators inveigh against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these invectives so evidently show the passions and point of view of the Populace, that they do not sink into the minds of those at whom they are addressed, or awaken any thought or self−examination in them. Again, when our aristocratical baronet describes the Philistines and the Populace as influenced with a kind of hideous mania for emasculating the aristocracy, that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and excited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does not much set the Philistines and the Populace thinking. Or when Mr. Lowe calls the Populace drunken and venal, he so evidently calls them this in an agony of apprehension for his Philistine or middle−class Parliament, which has done so many great and heroic works, and is now threatened with mixture and debasement, that the Populace do not lay his words seriously to heart.”

PoliticsClassBarbariansPopulismPhilistinesPhilistinismPopulace
Author:Matthew Arnold
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“The suicide committed by Sampson was partly determined by the craftiness of Delilah and partly decided by the disobedience of Sampson. Satan uses crafty means to set traps for us, but by our obedience of the laws of God, the traps remain functionless.”

DevilSuicideObedienceSatanArroganceDeceitArrogantDeceivingPreachingCommandmentsFoolishnessDisobedienceKillObedientOld TestamentScripturesHoly BibleSatanicGod S WordCraftCraftyObeyTrapPhilistinesProstituteWhoreSermonWoman PowerCraftinessDisobeyGod S LawsDelilahDisobedientObey The LawSampsonTake InstructionsThe Laws Of God
Author:Israelmore Ayivor
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“He was eager to tell me about his latest work, which consisted of him vomiting on a footpath, then cordoning it off. Each artwork lasted until the first ‘philistine’ thought to take the rope down. ‘In that way, the philistine is drawn – whether he likes it or not – into my art. He becomes part of it…and the vomit part of him. Essentially, it is the cosmic vomit. We all spew it. It blurs the boundaries, subverts the liminal…”

SatireSatiricalModern ArtPhilistines
Book:Reveries of the Dreamking
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“Private enterprise, pursuing as ever quick profits from the vapid tastes of the market-place, eschews judgement, and rather than put its hand in the fire for excellence, puts its head in the rubbish for money. Many and many a fine work has been thus abandoned. 'Alas!' cry the mansion-dwelling entrepreneurs, weeping crocodile tears, 'The money ran out!' But it was not the money; it was the rats.”

ArtCapitalismPhilistinesPhilistinism
Book:Sketches from Bleak House
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“Social science and humanities ... have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine. ... The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not.”

MenWantFactsHumanitySocialDifferencesFormerLatterMutualContemptPredictableSocial ScienceLooking DownPhilistines
Author:Allan Bloom
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“I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four without ease or interposition ... these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. O for a few years between the grave and the desk!”

KnowsYearsFacesGrowsHoursKnow HowFourAirWallTenTiredBreatheGravesGoldenEaseThirtyOfficialsNecksReliefDishesDesksThirty YearsClerksYokeConfinementPhilistinesGolden Hour
Book:The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works
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“Philistine - a word which I understand properly to denote indifference to the higher intellectual interests. The word may also be defined, however, as the name applied by prigs to the rest of their species.”

MayNamesInterestHigherIntellectualSpeciesDefinedIndifferencePhilistines
Book:Sir Thomas Browne. Jonathan Edwards. Horace Walpole. Dr. Johnson's writings. Crabbe. William Hazlitt. Disraeli's novels. Massinger
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“Utilitarianism had found [in Samuel Smiles' Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy.”

MenWaySelfHelpingFoundWinningBoysEconomicSelf HelpHeroOfficeFortuneStrivePortraitsGalleryBourgeoisVigorousRomanticismPrototypePhilistinesUtilitarianismPlutocracy
Author:John Carroll
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“It has been wisely said, "that well may thy guardian angel suffer thee to lose thy locks, when thou darest wilfully to lay thy head in the lap of temptation!" Was it not easier for the hero of Judaea to avoid the touch of the fair Philistine, than to elude her power when held in her arms?”

WellsMayHas BeensSaidSufferingLosesArmsHeroEasierAngelFairsLaysTemptationTheeLocksGuardianLapEludeGuardian AngelPhilistines
Book:Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks
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“[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on.”

WorldWellsShowsFormCertainResponsibilityImaginePossibilityEthicsBreathsPhysicsSpitePinsPaganismNaturalismLegalismPhilistinesHope Death
Book:Essays in Religion and Morality
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“With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.”

GivingDoeOrderClassDuesSupremeHidingSubmitDictatorshipProletariatPhilistines
Book:The defence of terrorism: terrorism and communism; a reply to Karl Kautsky
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“It is characteristic of the barbarian ... to insist upon seeing a thing "as it is." The desire testifies that he has nothing in himself with which to spiritualize it; the relation is one of thing to thing without the intercession of the imagination. Impatient of the veiling with which the man of higher type gives the world imaginative meaning, the barbarian and the Philistine, who is the barbarian living amid culture, demands the access of immediacy. Where the former wishes representation, the latter insists upon starkness of materiality, suspecting rightly that forms will mean restraint.”

MenWorldGivingMeanFormDesireCultureWishImaginationSeeingHe ManTypeHigherDemandRelationAccessFormerCharacteristicsLatterRepresentationRestraintImaginativeImpatientBarbariansIntercessionImmediacyPhilistinesMateriality
Author:Richard M. Weaver
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“Here is an example to help you understand the efficacy of the Rosary. You remember the story of David who vanquished Goliath. What steps did the young Israelite take to overthrow the giant? He struck him in the middle of the forehead with a pebble from his sling. If we regard the Philistine as representing evil and all its powers: heresy, impurity, pride, we can consider the little stones from the sling capable of overthrowing the enemy as symbolizing the Aves of the Rosary.”

IfsLittlesHelpingStoriesRememberYoungEvilStepsEnemyMiddleExamplePrideCapableStonesRegardGiantsHeresyForeheadsRepresentingPebblesEfficacyRosaryImpurityPhilistinesGoliath
Author:Columba Marmion
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“The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe. the forces that make it tick, the stuff it's made of; the origin of living things, and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of; like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse.”

WellsArtMadeFactsShowsHumanityUniverseForceStuffMoralPolicyIgnoranceCostAchievementCapableSpeciesPracticalsCuresIndifferenceWorks Of ArtAllowingMagnificentNurtureMachineryGreat WorkLiving ThingsAstonishingDisarmamentTickCompetitivenessWarehousePhilistines
Author:Steven Pinker
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“I think a more complex idea of fiction - and the human self's relationship with the world - emerges when we abandon this philistine equation between literature and liberalism and human goodness, and pay some attention to the darker, ambiguous, and often muddled energies and motivations that shape a work of art. If we do this, we can appreciate a writer like Céline or Gottfried Benn without worrying whether they conform to existing notions of political incorrectness.”

IfsThinkingWorldHumansArtIdeasSelfPoliticalMotivationLiteratureEnergyLinesPayAttentionFictionWorryShapesGoodnessAppreciateComplexesNotionLiberalismAbandonWorks Of ArtConformEquationsAmbiguousPhilistines
Author:Pankaj Mishra
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“That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.”

IfsWantHeartMadeBookReasonEnoughShowsSeemsFilmUsedEnergySawsCryMy HeartActivityDevilOptimismMovedInspiredUsualChamberElectricalPactFlickerPhilistinesChamber Music
Author:Nick Hornby
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“It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

PoliticalValuesWaterReligiousIllusionDirectTradeNakedEnthusiasmHeavenlyEcstasyBrutalExploitationOne WordCalculationsEgotisticalFree TradeIcyShamelessPhilistinesCommunist ManifestoPersonal Worth
Book:The Communist Manifesto & Selected Writings: & Selected Writings
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