Disinterested Quotes - Page 3

• The modern moralists extol ... the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.

  Julien Benda

  Modern, Defiance, Cult

  Julien Benda (2011). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”, p.146, Transaction Publishers

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• The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.

  Northrop Frye

  Philosophy, Literature, Mythology

  Northrop Frye, Robert D. Denham (2003). “Northrop Frye's Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts”, p.158, University of Toronto Press

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• You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Book, Home, Writing

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• Skepticism literally means a thoughtful inquiry, the looking at a problem in a disinterested spirit, the surveying of a question from many sides. In this sense it is the very essence of philosophy and science.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Mean, Thoughtful

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1918). “The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy”

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• Can you blame me if I am pursued by the thought of how much we could do to remedy social evils, if only we had an honest and disinterested press?

  Upton Sinclair

  Media, Evil, Honest

  Upton Sinclair (2015). “The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism”, p.101, Open Road Media

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• That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

  Michael Crichton

  Science, World, Faces

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• The Pope appeals for disinterested solidarity and for a return to person-centred ethics in the world of finance and economics.

  Pope Francis

  Justice, World, Return

  "Pope Francis Is About to Blow Elizabeth Warren Out of the Water" by AJ Vicens, www.motherjones.com. September 15, 2015.

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• The majority of men cannot be made disinterested for life by exhortation, by religious services, by any expenditure of subsidized works, or even by grave and manifest public need. They can be made permanently unselfish only by being helped to become disinterested in their individual purposes. In the complete democracy a man must in some way be made to serve the nation in the very act of contributing to his own individual fulfillment. Not until his personal action is dictated by disinterested motives can there be any such harmony between private and public interests.

  Herbert Croly

  Religious, Men, Democracy

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• There is still a tendency to regard any existing government intervention as desirable, to attribute all evils to the market, and to evaluate new proposals for government control in their ideal form, as they might work if run by able, disinterested men free from the pressure of special interest groups.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, Men, Evil

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.197, University of Chicago Press

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• The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Political, Doe, Fence

  "Patriotic Gore" by Brian Doherty, reason.com. January 18, 2006.

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• The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else.

  Joseph Butler

  Heart, Love Is, Self

  Joseph Butler (1856). “The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature: To which are Added, Two Brief Dissertations: on Personal Identity, and on the Nature of Virtue; and Fifteen Sermons”, p.490

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• There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Soul, Individuality

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.287

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• Granted the endless variations of moral customs, still the essential standards persist. As in a scientific laboratory, all else may change but the standards are unalterable- disinterested love of truth, fidelity to facts, accuracy in measurement, exactness of verification-so, in life as a whole, the towering ethical criteria remain unshaken. Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Loyalty, Truth, Honesty

  Harry Emerson Fosdick (1952). “A faith for tough times”

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• The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgement but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.

  Midge Decter

  Children, Breathing, Hatred

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• Truthful movements spontaneously attract to themselves all manner of pure and disinterested help.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, Movement, Awakening

  Mahatma Gandhi (2012). “The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas”, p.87, Vintage

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• The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes-an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. . . . No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.

  Albert J. Nock

  Views, Agreement, Order

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• Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.

  Aristotle

  Math, Skills, Egypt

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• Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don't realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.

  Laozi

  Kings, Heart, Grandmother

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• I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

  Stephen Fry

  Silly, Language, Distinction

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• Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.

  John Quincy Adams

  Country, Integrity, Party

  John Quincy Adams, Kenneth V. Jones, United States. President (1825-1829 : Adams) (1970). “John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848; chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”, Oceana Pubns

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• Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Sublime, Action

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• We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action

  Woodrow Wilson

  Spiritual, Character, Thinking

  Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Addresses of President Wilson, January 27-February 3, 1916”

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• I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Interest, Suspicious

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• The notion of travelling to far places in order to study alien peoples and cultures, is unique to Western man; it springs from the predatory genius of the Greeks; no primitive peoples have ever come to study us. This is, on the one hand, a disinterested, intellectually inspired impulse. It is one of our glories. But it is, on the other, part and parcel of exploitation. [] The Western obsession with inquiry, with analysis, with the classification of all living forms, is itself a mode of subjugation, of psychological and technical mastery.

  George Steiner

  Spring, Unique, Men

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• 'Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

  George Washington

  Real, Character, Pride

  Nancy Spannaus, Christopher White, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas More, Henry VIII (2015). “The Political Economy of the American Revolution”, p.290, Executive Intelligence Review

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