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Ultimate Quotes

“We thought it was only in science fiction that things created by humans could actually take over what is inherently our human heritage. But Thom Hartmann shows how we've already let that happen on a frightening scale - not in Frankenstein's monsters or Kubrick's creeping computer Hal - but in the corporations that present their friendly 'faces' to us as if we have nothing to fear from this ultimate usurpation of our rights as real humans.”

IfsHumansRealShowsHappensFacesFictionRightsComputerUltimateScience FictionMonstersScalesCorporationsFriendlyHeritageFrighteningUsurpationFrankenstein's MonsterFriendly Faces
Author:Ed Ayres
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“Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.”

PeopleIfsHumansIdeasEnoughLawTurnsEvilClearModernHuman NatureOppositesUltimateComplicatedUncertaintyCooperation
Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
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“Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.”

WorldEndsPhilosophyFactsRealityPoliticalPassionIntellectualUltimateErrorsConvictionDuesGenuineMeaninglessEroticParagraphExcludedIdentifyingUltimate Reality
Book:Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals
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“To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain efficiency in outward doing without the use of intelligence, and an accumulation of knowledge that is supposed to be an ultimate end in itself, means that education accepts the present social conditions as final, and thereby takes upon itself the responsibility for perpetuating them. A reorganization of education so that learning takes place in connection with the intelligent carrying forward of purposeful activities is a slow work. It can be accomplished only piecemeal, a step at a time.”

MeanEndsUseSocialResponsibilityAcceptingStepsConditionsExerciseActivityConnectionsUltimateIntelligentStriveFinalsSupposed To BeAccomplishedWorking ItEfficiencyAccumulationDrillsPerpetuatingSocial ConditionsReorganization
Book:Democracy And Education
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“An intelligent couple can read their Darwin and know that the ultimate reason for their sexual urges is procreation. They know that the woman cannot conceive because she is on the pill. Yet they find that their sexual desire is in no way diminished by the knowledge. Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual's psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale.”

KnowsWayReasonDesireIndividualStrongForcePsychologyCoupleUltimatePressureIntelligentIndependentUrgesPillsProcreationRationaleSexual Desire
Book:The God Delusion
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“Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account simply because we are dead.”

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Author:Robertson Davies
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“Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is - both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology - of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.”

MenWayWantGivingSchoolFormMotivationEnergyTreeMankindDogEventsConsciousConceptsFlowDirectUltimateHorseAimOne WayInevitableWelfareDamnFrustrationCosmosPrimitiveRatsOptimistPessimistUnifiedFulfilmentIllogicalFungiLice
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations. It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

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Author:Christopher Alexander
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“As we educate a child -- removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience -- we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence -- towards perfection.”

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Author:Leonid Andreyev
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“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”

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Book:Pieces of Eight Pa
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“The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .”

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Book:Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays
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“There is no man ... however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man -- so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise -- unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded.”

MenSaidWisdomCertainMemoriesWiseStageYouthRegretOughtPeriodsUltimateIncarnationBeing Wise
Book:In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time
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“Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.”

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Author:Margaret Mead
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“Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man.”

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Book:Second foundation
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“People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.”

PeopleMenWantShouldMeanMadeEndsFoundMistakeUltimateLeavingSatisfyingSoleWant UExclusionMisersUnsatisfied
Author:Herbert Spencer
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“The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State. Therefore an effective statement of these activities - e.g. science, art, religion - is in itself a declaration of ultimate aims around which the political means will crystallise... a society with no values outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with no purpose in its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need for love.”

NeedsHumansMeanArtStatesCarePoliticalPurposeValuesLonelinessActivityEternalMachinesUltimateAimInstitutionsStatementsAspirationDeclarationFrameworkReflectingCargo
Author:Stephen Spender
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“[Serialism] is like a sailless ship, driven out to sea by its captain, who has grown tired of its being used only as a pontoon, and who is privately convinced that by subjecting life aboard to the rules of an elaborate protocol, he will prevent the crew from thinking nostalgically either of their home port or of their ultimate destination.…”

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Author:Claude Levi-Strauss
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“For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even though you find no other soul to agree with you, and if you dislike a book you must declare that it is not literature though a million voices should shout you that you are wrong. The ultimate decision will be made by Time.”

IfsShouldMadeBookSoulLiteratureVoiceDecisionMillionsJudgingTasteTestsUltimateAgreeContemporaryDislikeNew BooksContemporary LiteraturePersonal Taste
Book:The March of Literature: From Confucius' Day to Our Own
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“PLEASURE and pain are undoubtedly the ultimate objects of the calculus of economics. To satisfy our wants to the utmost with the least effort - to procure the greatest amount of what is desirable at the expense of the least that is undesirable - in other words, to maximize pleasure, is the problem of economics.”

WantProblemPainPleasureEffortObjectsAmountEconomicsUltimateExpensesDesirableCalculusPain And PleasureUndesirable
Book:The Theory of Political Economy
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“We don't call war hell because it is fought without restraint. It is more nearly right to say that, when certain restraints are passed, the hellishness of war drives us to break with every remaining restraint in order to win. Here is the ultimate tyranny: those who resist aggression are forced to imitate, and perhaps even to exceed, the brutality of the aggressor.”

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Book:Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
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“The way to experience ultimate happiness is to let go of all worries and regrets, and to know that being happy is the most satisfying of life's feelings. Reflect back on all the progress in your life and allow the positive, creative and joyous thoughts to outshine and overwhelm any sorrow or grief that may linger in the recesses of your mind. Knowing that disease and disaster are natural parts of life is the key to overcoming adversity with a calm and happy spirit. Happiness is waiting there in front of you. Only you can decide whether or not you choose to experience it. Take this to heart.”

KnowsWayLifeInspirationalMindHeartMayFeelingsHappinessLife IsSpiritWaitingNaturalGriefCreativityWorryCreativeKnowingProgressFrontsPositiveRegretKeysSorrowLetting GoDiseaseExperienceUltimateOvercomingAdversityCalmDisasterSatisfyingYou ChooseBeing HappyJoyousOvercoming AdversityParts Of LifeRecessHappy SpiritUltimate Happiness
Author:Toshitsugu Takamatsu
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