Primitive Quotes

• Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Cancer, Lakes, Community

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.80, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Religious

  "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear" by James Randerson, www.theguardian.com. May 13, 2008.

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• The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

  Don DeLillo

  Beautiful, Mind, Noble

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.158, Pan Macmillan

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• Trust, in its most primitive form, is based on authenticity, not flawlessness.

  Todd Duncan

  Authenticity, Form

  Todd Duncan (2002). “High Trust Selling: Make More Money in Less Time with Less Stress”, p.29, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• As civilization advances, man grows unconscious of the primitive elements of life; he is separated from them by his perfection of material techniques.

  Charles Lindbergh

  Men, Civilization, Perfection

  Charles A. Lindbergh (1992). “Autobiography of Values”, Harcourt

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• One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Reality, Long

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.404, Princeton University Press

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• In a sense, evolution adheres to the classic twelve-step program: it takes things one day at a time. It does not strive for perfection; it does not strive at all. There is no progress, no plans, no scala natura, or scale of nature, that ranks organisms from lowly to superior, primitive to advanced.

  Natalie

  Perfection, One Day At A Time, Progress

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• To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mind, Friendly, World

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.49, Bertrand Russell

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• We are primitive men; we taboo what we desire and need. How did the denying of love come to be associated with the idea of morality.

  Christina Stead

  Love, Art, Men

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• The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

  Albert Einstein

  Beautiful, Death, God

  Quoted in Philipp Frank Einstein: His Life and Times (1947), ch.12, section 5.

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• Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Sex, Psychics, People

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.272, Faber & Faber

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• It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back.

  James G. Frazer

  Science, People, Soul

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

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• Despite a primitive brain, the octopus possesses an intricate system that helps it decide which tentacle to masturbate with.

  Dana Gould

  Octopus, Brain, Helping

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• The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.

  Albert Einstein

  Atheist, Science, Expression

  "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear" by James Randerson, www.theguardian.com. May 13, 2008.

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• To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty... this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

  Albert Einstein

  Beauty, Wise, Knowledge

  Quoted in Philipp Frank Einstein: His Life and Times (1947), ch.12, section 5.

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• Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Change, Education, Religion

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• If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%? In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.

  Dave Barry

  Golf, Self, Expression

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• Despite the theories traditionally taught in high-school social studies, the truth is: the more primitive the society, the more leisured its way of life.

  Peter Farb

  School, Way, Taught

  Peter Farb (1968). “Man's Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State”

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• Good music is very close to primitive language.

  Denis Diderot

  Literature, Language, Music Is

  "Elements of Physiology". Book by Denis Diderot, 1875.

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• Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Reflection, People, Serious

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• The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Swamps, Wilderness, Grows

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume III (of 20)”, p.87, Trajectory Inc

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• Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations.

  Karl Jaspers

  Men, Thinking, Primitive Man

  "Man in the Modern Age (Routledge Revivals)".

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• It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

  Joseph Campbell

  Dream, Art, Philosophy

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.1, New World Library

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• As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.

  Herbert Spencer

  Fall, Self, Long

  "The Principles of Ethics" by Herbert Spencer, (Ch. 10), 1897.

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• The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

  Stephen Leacock

  Book, Reading, Class

  1913 Behind the Beyond,'Homer and Humbug'.

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