Richard M. Weaver Quotes

Quotes about:

• Nature is not something to be fought, conquered and changed according to any human whims. To some extent, of course, it has to be used. But what man should seek in regard to nature is not a complete domination but a modus vivendi - that is, a manner of living together, a coming to terms with something that was here before our time and will be here after it. The important corollary of this doctrine, it seems to me, is that man is not the lord of creation, with an omnipotent will, but a part of creation, with limitations, who ought to observe a decent humility in the face of the inscrutable.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Humility, Men, Important

  48 Copy quote

• 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.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Vanity, Personality

  "Ideas have Consequences". Book by Richard M. Weaver, p. 62, 1948.

  19 Copy quote

• The man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetite.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Past, Men, Connections

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.101, University of Chicago Press

  12 Copy quote

• When you're on the wrong road, sometimes the most progressive man is the one who goes backwards first. As long as there are such people, hope lies in our future.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Lying, Men, Long

  14 Copy quote

• The home was a school. Farm and cabin households, though bookless save for the Family Bible and The Sacred Harp, taught the girls to spin, weave, quilt, cook, sew, and mind their manners; the boys to wield gun, ax, hammer and saw, to ride, plow, sow and reap, and to be men. Nobody need ever be bored. Amusement did not have to be bought.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Girl, Quilts, War

  16 Copy quote

• We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Mean, Descent, Capacity

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.9, University of Chicago Press

  17 Copy quote

• The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of man.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Independent, Destiny, Men

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

• It is likely ... that human society cannot exist without some source of sacredness. Those states which have sought openly to remove it have tended in the end to assume divinity themselves.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Divinity, Assuming, Ends

  12 Copy quote

• Chivalry - ...a romantic idealism closely related to Christianity, which makes honor the guiding principle of conduct. Connected with this is the ancient concept of the gentleman.

  Richard M. Weaver

  War, Guiding Principles, Gentleman

  12 Copy quote

• Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle.

  Richard M. Weaver

  War, Principles, Prejudice

  Richard M. Weaver (1966). “Life Without Prejudice: And Other Essays”

  11 Copy quote

• The saying of John Peale Bishop is worth recalling, that the South excelled in two things which the French deem essential to civilization: a code of manners and a native cuisine. Both are apt to suffer when life is regarded as a means to something else. Efficiency and charm are mortal enemies, and Southern charm indubitably derives from a carelessness about the efficient aspects of life.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Mean, Civilization, Two

  12 Copy quote

• In the last analysis, provincialism is your belief in yourself, in your neighborhood, in your reality. It is patriotism without belligerence. Convincing cases have been made to show that all great art is provincial in the sense of reflecting a place, a time, and a Zeitgeist.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Art, Reality, Analysis

  Richard M. Weaver (1987). “The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver”, Liberty Fund

  55 Copy quote

• Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle. For prejudices, as we have seen earlier, are often built-in principles. They are the extract which the mind has made of experience.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Mind, Principles, Prejudice

  Richard M. Weaver (1966). “Life without prejudice, and other essays”

  9 Copy quote

• Until the world perceives that "good" cannot be applied to a thing because it is our own, and "bad" because it is another's, there is no prospect of realizing community.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Community, World, Realizing

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.151, University of Chicago Press

  9 Copy quote

• The man of frank and strong prejudices, far from being a political and social menace and an obstacle in the path of progress, is often a benign character and helpful citizen. The chance is far greater, furthermore, that he will be more creative than the man who can never come to more than a few gingerly held conclusions, or who thinks that all ideas should be received with equal hospitality. There is such a thing as being so broad you are flat.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Strong, Character, Men

  3 Copy quote

• The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist. ... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Self, Temptation

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition”, p.50, University of Chicago Press

  8 Copy quote

• The hero can never be a relativist.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Hero

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences”, p.31, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

• Ideas have consequences.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Ideas, Consequence

  Richard M. Weaver (1995). “Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time”, Isi Books

  4 Copy quote

• The complete man, then, is the "lover" added to the scientist; the rhetorician to the dialectician.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Lovers, Scientist

  Richard M. Weaver (1985). “The Ethics of Rhetoric”, p.21, Psychology Press

  6 Copy quote

• The most likely way to kill a tradition is to over-formalize it, which is to carry it on in the same way after everyone has ceased to defer to it. The way to revive it is to show that it has grown out of and is still related to our most cherished values. But this requires radical insight and the stripping away of many things which are mere accretions.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Way, Tradition, Stripping

  Richard M. Weaver, Ted J. Smith (2000). “In defense of tradition: collected shorter writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963”, Liberty Fund Inc.

  10 Copy quote

• [The South] is ****ed for its virtues and praised for its faults, and there are those who wish its annihilation. But most revealing of all is the fear that it gestates the revolutionary impulse of our future.

  Richard M. Weaver

  War, Wish, Faults

  7 Copy quote

• No society is healthy which tells its members to take no thought of the morrow because the state underwrites their future.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Healthy, States, Morrow

  3 Copy quote

• Education is a process by which the individual is developed into something better than he would have been without it. ... The very though seems in a way the height of presumption. For one thing, it involves the premise that some human beings can be better than others.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Height, Way, Individual

  Richard M. Weaver (1966). “Life Without Prejudice: And Other Essays”

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Responsibility, Utterance, Assumption

  Richard M. Weaver (1985). “The Ethics of Rhetoric”, p.6, Psychology Press

  10 Copy quote

• Try to imagine a man setting out for the day without a single prejudice. ... Inevitably he would be in a state of paralysis. He could not get up in the morning, or choose his necktie, or make his way to the office, ... or, to come right down to the essence of the thing, even maintain his identity.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Morning, Men, Essence

  Richard M. Weaver (1966). “Life Without Prejudice: And Other Essays”

  9 Copy quote

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