Practicals Quotes - Page 11

• Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Might, Effects, Whole

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.204, Courier Corporation

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• The difficulty in our education up till now lies, for the most part, in the fact that knowledge did not refine itself into will, to application of itself, to pure practice. The realists felt the need and supplied it, though in a most miserable way, by cultivating idea-less and fettered "practical men." Most college students are living examples of this sad turn of events. Trained in the most excellent manner, they go on training; drilled they continue drilling.

  Max Stirner

  Lying, College, Men

  Max Stirner (1967). “The False Principle of Our Education: Or, Humanism and Realism”, Ralph Myles Pub

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• I am a plain practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic.

  James G. Frazer

  Men, Hair, Logic

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.

  Jacques Maritain

  Desire, Conformity, Ends

  "Action: the Perfection of Human Life" by Jacques Maritain, Sewanee Review, LV (pp. 3-4), 1948.

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• One thing I hate about the New Deal is that it is killing what, to me, is the American pioneering spirit. I simply do not know what to tell my own boys, leaving school and confronting this new world whose ideal is Security and whose practice is dependence upon government instead of upon one's self. All the old character-values seem simply insane from a practical point of view; the self-reliant, the independent, the courageous man is penalized from every direction.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Hate, Independent, School

  Journal entry for April 15, 1937. "The Ghost in the Little House" by William V. Holtz. Chapter 14, 1993.

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• I avoid the carwash when I think it might rain anytime in the near future, which means I drive around the majority of the time in a pollen and bird poop covered car. This presents a stand off between Neat Freakshow and Practical Pennypincher, and Neat Freak usually triumphs. And then it rains.

  Kristin Armstrong

  Rain, Mean, Thinking

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• A wasted human being--that's a sort of practical blasphemy, according to my religion.

  Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Blasphemy, Humans, Human Beings

  Samuel Hopkins Adams (2013). “Wanted: A Husband: (With Original Illustrations)”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; today he is divine because he has been able to create equipment which makes him the master of matter.

  Julien Benda

  Spiritual, Men, Law

  Julien Benda, Roger Kimball (2017). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”, p.57, Routledge

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• 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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• Teachers ... preach "the superiority of the intelligence"; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i.e. from exactly the same passion for the practical.

  Julien Benda

  Teacher, Passion, Action

  Julien Benda (1969). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”

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• The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.

  Julien Benda

  Beautiful, Struggle, Passion

  "Treason of the Intellectuals". Book by Julien Benda, p. 159, 1927.

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• It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Writing, Issues, Ethical Questions

  "Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Unenchanted Evening", p. 39, 1993.

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• As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation.

  Francois Fenelon

  Giving Up, Light, Grace

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p.264, 1895.

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• Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.

  Eric Hoffer

  Management, Affair, Qualifications

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

  William James

  Christian, Emotional, Differences

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.45, Booklassic

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• We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

  William James

  Believe, Fighting, Fire

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• It is the duty of all who make philosophy the entertainment of their lives, to turn their thoughts to practical schemes for the good of society, and not pass away their time in fruitless searches, which tend rather to the ostentation of knowledge than the service of life.

  Joseph Addison

  Philosophy, Passing Away, Entertainment

  Joseph Addison (1837). “The Tatler. The Guardian. The Freeholder. The Whig-examiner. The lover. Dialogues upon the usefulness of ancient medals. Remarks on several parts of Italy, etc. The present state of the war. The late trial and conviction of Count Tariff. The evidences of the Christian religion. Essay on Virgil's Georgics. Poems on several occasions. Translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Notes on some of the foregoing stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Poemata. Rosamond. Cato. The drummer”, p.90

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• When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life.

  Mark Twain

  Jobs, Indulge In, Ignorant

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, p.4, Univ of California Press

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• There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man's law, as though she were not a woman but a man.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Spiritual, Women, Law

  Henrik Ibsen (1912). “- Hedda Gabler. The Master Builder. From Ibsen's Workshop. v.2- Brand. Peer Gynt. v.3- Emperor & Galilean. A Doll's House. Ghosts. v.4- Little Eyolf. John Gabriel Borkman. When We Dead Awaken. The Wild Duck. v.5- Lady Inger of Ostrat. The feast of Solhoug. Love's Comedy. The Vikings at Helgeland. The Pretenders. v.6- The League of Youth. Pillars of Society. Rosenersholm. The Lady from the Sea”

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• The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Race, Evil, Faces

  Theodore Dreiser (2016). “The Financier”, p.217, Open Road Media

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• Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands.

  Camille Paglia

  Philosophical, Thinking, Hands

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed - we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.

  Albert J. Nock

  Moral Fiber, Law, Proud

  "On Doing the Right Thing". "The American Mercury" Magazine, 1925.

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• Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?

  Novalis

  Philosophy, Bread, Immortality

  As quoted in the essay "Novalis" by Thomas Carlyle, 1829.

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• If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.

  Donald Knuth

  Practice, Attention, Spending

  "Theory and Practice". Theoretical Computer Science, 1991.

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• For me, it was like this: pronounced antipathy to conversing about matters of practical life, the future, dates, politics. You are fixated on the intellectual sphere as a man possessed may be fixated on the sexual: under its spell, sucked into it.

  Walter Benjamin

  Men, Intellectual, May

  Walter Benjamin (2006). “On Hashish”, p.21, Harvard University Press

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