Philipp Blom > Quotes

“No dictatorship has ever approved of jazz.”
― Philipp Blom, Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

“The irony at the base of this situation is that the gospel of the free market is just as ideological as those of communism and fascism.”
― Philipp Blom, Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

“Close dancing may be the best inoculation against ideology.”
― Philipp Blom, Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

“Nietzsche's subtle, poetic, and entirely unsystemic attacks on academic style and thinking were predestined to be quoted out of context, and his pithy and often sarcastic observations could be put in the service of a wider assault on rationality itself.”
― Philipp Blom, Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

“They could simply not accept that there might be no God, precisely because that would mean that life was not inherently meaningful. In their heart of hearts they were unwilling to confront the possibility that they themselves, the vast universe of every individual consciousness, could be as meaningless and as random as a leaf whirled into the air by a gust of wind. The”
― Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

“Man believes that his welfare is a debt due to him from nature; that when he suffers evil she does him an injustice.”10 We project intentionality, good and evil, into nature, because we are with mysterious forces. We humanize nature by ascribing a will to its blind workings, a social reflex that at the same time reveals us to be deeply narcissistic; we simply cannot believe that anything around us could exist very well without us, that we are neither the purpose of creation nor the center of the universe. God”
― Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

“(S)limme ondernemers en zelfbenoemde dromers allang plannen maken om de planeet, waarop de mensheid zich recent heeft gedragen als een rockband in een hotelsuite, gewoon achter zich te laten en met een kosmische ark van Noah de eigen verwoestende instincten en bezitsaanspraken naar andere delen van de melkweg te brengen.”
― Philipp Blom, De onderwerping: een geschiedenis van de verhouding van de mens tot de natuur

“any attachment bears within it the tragedy of loss.”
― Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

“Slimme ondernemers en zelfbenoemde dromers maken allang plannen om de planeet, waarop de mensheid zich recent heeft gedragen als een rockband in een hotelsuite, gewoon achter zich te laten en met een kosmische ark van Noah de eigen verwoestende instincten en bezitsaanspraken naar andere delen van de melkweg te brengen.”
― Philipp Blom, De onderwerping: een geschiedenis van de verhouding van de mens tot de natuur

“Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in.”
― Philipp Blom, Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present

“Spin doctors in every era have known that perception is infinitely more potent than mere fact.”
― Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years: Change And Culture In The West, 1900-1914

“In other words, it makes no difference whether one believes in God. As there is no way of proving or disproving the object of this belief, it remains a personal choice, much like a preference for a particular dish or for strong coffee. You may believe what you want, as long as it helps you live. This”
― Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

“Schilders zijn van oudsher verliefd op wolken, op de stormachtige metamorfosen ervan, op de plasticiteit van vormen, het spel van licht en schaduw, en de dramatische stemmingswisselingen die binnenvallen als plotseling de zon verdwijnt of als een openbaring door de torenhoge loden massa's breekt.”
― Philipp Blom, De onderwerping: een geschiedenis van de verhouding van de mens tot de natuur

“Some 110,000 witch trials occurred at this time in Europe, roughly half of them ending in conviction and execution”
― Philipp Blom, Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present

“The peak of the climate episode we know as the Little Ice Age coincides with massive changes in European societies. To some extent at least, improved agricultural techniques, stronger and more international markets, and an increasingly globalized system of economic domination (of growth based on exploitation) allowed Europeans to develop more successful responses to climate change and to the hardships it inflicted. These responses were answered in their turn by transformations in every aspect of culture and society.”
― Philipp Blom, Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present

“Instead of extinguishing in the heart of men the essential and natural love for themselves, morality should use it to show them the interest in being good, human, sociable, and trustworthy: far from wanting to destroy the passions inherent in his nature, morality will lead him to virtue, without which no man on earth can ever enjoy true happiness.”
― Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment

“Tax records show that the Viennese had an average per capita consumption of 150 liters of wine per year—i.e., half a bottle a day.”
― Philipp Blom, Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present

“De milieubalans van het Wirtschaftswunder was van meet af aan alarmerend, maar is tegenwoordig verworden tot een systeem van georganiseerde dodelijke waanzin, waarin een primaat zijn eigen bestaansvoorwaarde is gaan vernietigen.”
― Philipp Blom, De onderwerping: een geschiedenis van de verhouding van de mens tot de natuur

“Kultura imperijalizma i maštanje o Orijentu nisu iste stvari. Potonje je bilo značajan dio europske kulture na prijelazu iz 19. stoljeća. Doduše, svrha maštanja nisu bile imperijalne težnje, nego je ono nudilo bijeg od vrtoglave brzine modernog života...
Fascinacija Orijentom bila je ujedno i fascinacija senzualnim svijetom "prirodnih" i snažnih emocija, erotskim rajem koji nije dodirnula blijedaa ruka Crkve, niti ga je pervertirao veliki grad. ...Postojala je još jedna snažna privlačnost orijentalnog svijeta. Osjećaj vječnosti, iluzija pustinje, tropskih šuma i zabačenih visoravni (kako je zamišljao Conan Doyle, moglo bi se tu skrivati cijelo prethistorijsko carstvo životinja i zmajeva), drevnih gradova u kojima su drevni običaji upravljali životima fatalističkih naseljenika, nudili su potpunu suprotnost kontroliranom životu, ovisnom o tehnologiji, kojim je stanovništvo bilo primorano živjeti u modernim gradovima. Čak su opijum i hašiš, droge uvezene iz tog primamljivog svijeta, nudile sladak zagrljaj potpunog zaborava i rijetke trenutke blaženstva izvan vremena i prostora. Ako je brzina bila otrov suvremenosti, Orijent je bio njen protuotrov.”
― Philipp Blom