Imperatives Quotes - Page 12

• Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Demand, Remember

  "Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays". Book by Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1997.

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• This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.

  Eric Hoffer

  Men, Building Up, Effort

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.

  Jean Cocteau

  Mean, Men, Discipline

  "Diary of an Unknown". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1988.

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• The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Employment, Noble

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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• Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity.

  Johann Gottlieb Fichte

  Unity, Intuition, Principles

  "Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge" by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, XI, 1810.

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• The search for justice and security, the struggle for equality of opportunity, the quest for tolerance and harmony, the pursuit of human dignity - these are moral imperatives which we must work towards and think about on a daily basis.

  Aga Khan IV

  Struggle, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Cosmopolitan Society, Human Safety and Rights in Plural and Peaceful Societies". Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at Evora University Symposium, iis.ac.uk. February 12, 2006.

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• It is the incongruous thing in my entire life, this isolation.. ... My work requires it - but I myself have no need or use for it - Perhaps once on a time I found isolation imperative - I think all chrysalides do - all embryos go for the underside of the leaf in the time of body-change preparing for the final reassertion -resurrection - the establishment of the entity. But now I've come up tot the outside of my casements.

  Marsden Hartley

  Thinking, Finals, Needs

  "Marsden Hartley". Book by Gail R. Scott, p. 151, 1988.

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• They are the gateway for our modern esthetic development, the prophets of the new time. They are most of all, the primitives of the way they have begun; they have voiced most of all the imperative need of essential personalism, of direct expression of direct experience.

  Marsden Hartley

  Expression, Essentials, Needs

  Marsden Hartley (2011). “Adventures in the Arts”, p.35, Hol Art Books

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• The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

  Peter Watts

  Philosophy, Self, Brain

  Peter Watts (2006). “Blindsight”, p.48, Macmillan

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• Science is fundamentally a moral enterprise, following the moral imperative to seek the truth.

  George Lakoff

  Moral, Enterprise, Following

  George Lakoff (2006). “Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea”, p.56, Macmillan

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• Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture.

  Lyonel Feininger

  Mean, Expression, Mind

  1917 Letter to Paul Westheim, quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube The Expressionists (1972).

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• We need to remain alert to what happens to the body when it is mediatised. Too often, the mediatised body is an anaesthetised body. I would be the last person to argue that the body signifies at some basic level that precedes or transcends its cultural inscriptions. Nevertheless, there is an ethical imperative not to conflate the body with its representations and mediations, but to remember that there is an actual body there somewhere, experiencing the consequences of what is being done to it.

  Philip Auslander

  Lasts, Would Be, Needs

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• To thrive in this new age of hyper-change and growing uncertainty, it is now an imperative to learn a new competency - how to accurately anticipate the future.

  Daniel Burrus

  Age, Growing, Thrive

  "Forget Lean and Agile. It's Time to Be Anticipatory" by Daniel Burrus, www.wired.com. August, 2014.

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• Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and--there you have it: Holocaust

  Richard Weikart

  War, Struggle, Eugenics

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• In the USA, where so many people compete for one and the same thing, where job opportunities, residential facilities, and food resources have to be spread over so many people, the question of justice becomes more imperative than ever before if communal and individual life is to be made possible and enjoyable.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Jobs, Opportunity

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• There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of contrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men's conjectures into dogmas.

  C. E. M. Joad

  Believe, Men, Atheism

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• Being rational is a moral Imperative. You should never be stupider than you need to be.

  Charlie Munger

  Needs, Moral, Should

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• Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Thinking, Voice, May

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.304

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• Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Determination, Self, Principles

  Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1984). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  War, Sacrifice, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt (2005). “Fear God and Take Your Own Part”, p.389, Cosimo, Inc.

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• It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Baby, Smoking, Flying

  Fran Lebowitz (1994). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, Vintage

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• My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.

  Ellen Goodman

  Fitness, Stress, Guilt

  Ellen Goodman (1990). “Making Sense”, Penguin Group USA

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• The desire for magic cannot be eradicated. Even the most supposedly rational people attempt to practice magic in love and war. We simultaneously possess the most primitive of brain stems and the most sophisticated of cortices. The imperatives of each coexist uneasily.

  Erica Jong

  War, Practice, People

  Erica Jong (2007). “What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong”, p.40, Penguin

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• Americans ought to be the best-traveled, most cosmopolitan people on earth, not only because experience of the world is desirable in its own right, but because as a people acquires a great concentration of power, worldliness becomes a moral imperative.

  Shana Alexander

  Travel, People, World

  Shana Alexander (1970). “The feminine eye”, McCall Pub. Co

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• Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence.

  Immanuel Kant

  Rights, Giving, Secret

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