John Armstrong > Quotes

“Imagination paints a charming view of the future, conveniently adapted to the demands of our current emotion.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“We need to be free if we are to love.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“A relationship does not start the day two people meet; it starts in the childhood of each partner. For it is long before they meet that the template of their relationship is established.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“This is the internal tragedy of love. If love is successful, if our love is returned and develops into a relationship, the person we are with must turn out to be other than we imagined them to be. Love craves closeness, and closeness always brings us face to face with something other than we expected.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“One’s relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one’s sense of identity, it shapes one’s attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less about Money

“What is given by nature is not necessarily good, what is achieved by artifice is not necessarily worthless.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“Compatibility, on this view, is an achievement of love, not a precondition for love.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“Imagination need not stand as an obstacle to clear-sighted perception; on the contrary, it can be a prerequisite for recognition of the less obvious aspects of what is really there.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“Love can sometimes rise up like a desperate cry from a neglected part of oneself which takes a long view but which is submerged by the presence of strident wants.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“This is the most effective way: let the growing soul look at life with the question: ‘What have you truly loved? What has drawn you upward, mastered and blessed you?”
― John Armstrong, Life Lessons From Nietzsche

“People are more slothful than timid. Their greatest fear is the heavy burden that uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them.”
― John Armstrong, Life Lessons From Nietzsche

“It is not suffering as such that makes someone appreciate love, it is only when suffering pierces our vanity—which happens when we do not blame someone else for our pain—that it awakens a deeper respect for love.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“When we try to love we are not actually trying to undertake a single endeavor; rather, we are trying to do a whole range of different, and sometimes not very compatible, things simultaneously.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“But mostly what we think of as the 'meaning' of life concerns the style of the private autobiography we each write and which records how we 'see' ourselves. Whether this autobiography reads as a narrative of progress in which difficulties are transcended, or is chaotic, is the test of whether one's life seems to be meaningful or not. Meaning is something we find, or fail to find, as we follow through this project. We can see how love figures here: love is a major theme, but how we see our experience of love depends upon our general thinking. If, for example, we work with extremely high expectations of love we impose a tragic style upon our self-perceptions: for our experience of love will always be seen under an aspect of failure—failure focused upon ourselves or others. Hence the more subtle our thinking about love, the more intelligently we discriminate ideals from reality, the more interesting our autobiography becomes.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“Money brings about good consequences – helps us live valuable lives – only when joined with ‘virtues’. Virtues are good abilities of mind and character.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“It may well be that status-seeking is an inescapable impulse of human nature. If this is true then we should seek to reform it, rather than vainly try to eliminate it. Reform would link status to the right things. It’s not wrong to admire someone, or to think of them as enviable. What we must ask is why we admire, and what it is that we envy. If someone has high status because they are wise, generous, sensitive to beauty and bring out the best in others – then absolutely their high status is deserved.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“Higher needs are often met in indirect ways. What we really need is time, mental space, understanding, a level of engagement with the minds and lives of others.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“The fact is that the money in our bank account was once something else: work and enterprise. And that money will become something else: possessions and experiences.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“There is a moment in conversation - and I wish it came more often - when we change gear; it is usually getting late, and somebody takes a risk. Gradually, intimate trust and relaxation have met; perhaps we have had a few glasses of wine ... We lean forward: ‘Here's how I *really* see life’; ‘To be completely honest, this is what I think.’ We have cut loose from complaint , from defence, from the clever display of information. Now it's what we love, what we hold dear; what it is like to be you. In pursuit of romance, this would be the moment when flirtation has succeeded: it is no longer a question of teasing and probing while keeping one eye on the exit. We know we do not need the getaway car any more. One life opens to another life.”
― John Armstrong, In Search of Civilization

“But the thing is, the two tables we have don’t go all that well together. One is rather better than the other. The one for sale in the shop window would be a much better fit with the overall pattern and style of the room. So, on balance I’d say that we need that table. Although there is a completely obvious sense in which we can live without it, I think that it is right that we should have it. There’s something substantial I want to do with it in my life. This is not random acquisitiveness. It’s a part of creating an environment that embodies values that I live by and take seriously. I appreciate the particular qualities and merits of the table. However, I’ve decided that I can’t afford the table. But I don’t want to give up wanting it. I don’t want to school myself into the belief that, because I can’t afford it, it doesn’t matter whether I have it or not.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“But the thing is, the two tables we have don’t go all that well together. One is rather better than the other. The one for sale in the shop window would be a much better fit with the overall pattern and style of the room. So, on balance I’d say that we need that table. Although there is a completely obvious sense in which we can live without it, I think that it is right that we should have it. There’s something substantial I want to do with it in my life.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“In general, the modern assumption is that we are sleepwalking to disaster and need to be roused from our complacency by angry, disturbing voices that tell us how bad things really are. Goethe's assumption is that - as individuals - we are, at least quite often, not complacent but the opposite: hysterical. Therefore a significant task for art and culture might be to calm us down, to bring order and harmony - so that we can do what we need to do.”
― John Armstrong, Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet

“Triumphant vulgarity rules the world (it is said) because the democratic numbers and the market forces always win. Once you have markets, cultural democracy and freedom of opinion, questions about merit and meaning will always be settled by majorities and money. Bot majorities and money have no real authority on questions of value.”
― John Armstrong, In Search of Civilization

“Sincerity is only as good as what we are sincere about.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“The tragic sense of life has its origin in our determination to carry off two incompatible, but equally serious, ambitions: to search for meaning and to face reality. An intense, unceasing demand for meaning - the longing for life to make benevolent, beautiful sense - is coupled with the dawning, appalling fact that it does not, in the end, make sense in that way. Tragedy is the name for horror seen against the backdrop of love.

This is an area in which civilization does not reduce our suffering - does not make life more pleasing or comfortable. What is the achievement of tragedy? It is to present the deepest sorrows of the human condition: what we love is terribly vulnerable; each life is a brief, scarring moment in the wastes of eternity; our transient existence will be marked by depression, confusion, and fear ... The ambition of tragedy is to hold such intelligent fears in a ceremonial act endowed with splendour and grace.

The ceremony does not overcome our fears. But, unlike horror, it does not seek to stoke anxiety. The tragic view is, really, a determination to hold on to nobility, love and beauty - even while knowing the worst about ourselves.”
― John Armstrong, In Search of Civilization

“Nimeni nu-și poate construi podul peste râul vieții, nimeni înafară de tine însuți”
― John Armstrong, Nietzsche

“Reflection on the places and sights that seem to show us the essence of civilization supports the view that it has an ideal aspect: civilization is not so much what we have as a picture of what we need. For me, some representative objects civilization are, to start the list: the classical squares and crescents of the New Town in Edinburgh; a table set for lunch in a quiet, leafy garden; Venice seen across the lagoon; the golden glow of lamplight in a bookish room, glimpsed through a window walking home at night from the station. What they suggest moves beyond what they actually are: they point to an ideal, even when they fall short in reality”
― John Armstrong, In Search of Civilization

“Worry is a name for mental effort: ideally one wants to worry more insightfully and more purposefully. The aim of adult life, one might say, is to worry well. We worry about things that matter; worry implies care. So: how much should you care about money? In what ways should you care about money? And for what reasons should you care about money? Should you feel fearful of money? Self-knowledge, skill and courage – the true antidotes to fear – do not make danger go away. They enable us to live a more flourishing life, despite the existence of danger.”
― John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money

“Amaca, normalde yaptığımızdan çok daha fazla dikkat etmeliyiz. Genelde şu soruyu sorma eğiliminde olmalıyız: Piramitleri (ya da Eyfel Kulesi'ni ya da Tate Modern müzesini) ziyaret edişim gerçekte ne için? Yani, bu benim hangi gerçek ihtiyacıma hizmet ediyor? "Onu kendi gözlerimle görmek istiyorum," ya da "Ölmeden önce yapılacaklar listemde var," ya da "Ünlü bir yer," demek yeterli değildir. Bu "nedenler" gerçek ihtiyaçlara karşılık gelmez. Nietzsche, hayatlarımıza daha değer vererek bakmamızı ister - dikkatimiz ve adanmışlığımız zor bulunan, boşa harcanmaması gereken değerli kaynaklardır.”
― John Armstrong, Life Lessons From Nietzsche