J.C. Shepard > J.C.'s Quotes

“The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.”
― Russell Kirk

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.”
― Russell Kirk

“Libertarians (like anarchists and Marxists) generally believe that human nature is good, though damaged by certain social institutions. Conservatives, on the contrary, hold that "in Adam's fall we sinned all": human nature, though compounded of both good and evil, is irremediably flawed; so the perfection of society is impossible, all human beings being imperfect.”
― Russell Kirk

“What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“There are six canons of conservative thought:

1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. "Every Tory is a realist," says Keith Feiling: "he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man's philosophy cannot plumb or fathom." True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls "Logicalism" in society. This prejudice has been called "the conservatism of enjoyment"--a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot "the proper source of an animated Conservatism."

3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a "classless society." With reason, conservatives have been called "the party of order." If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic levelling, they maintain, is not economic progress.

5) Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters, calculators, and economists" who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power.

6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman's chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.”
― Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

“The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.”
― Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan

“Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“In Joe’s experience, the person who talked the most very often had the least to say.”
― C.J. Box

“A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.”
― A.A. Milne

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“One of the biggest misperceptions about places of genius, I’m discovering, is that they are akin to paradise. They are not. Paradise is antithetical to genius. Paradise makes no demands, and creative genius takes root through meeting demands in new and imaginative ways. “The Athenians matured because they were challenged on all fronts,” said Nietzsche, in a variation of his famous “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger” line.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“The expectation of a reward or evaluation, even a positive evaluation, squelched creativity.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Studies have found that creative people have an especially high tolerance for ambiguity. I suspect this holds true for places of genius as well. Cities such as Athens and Florence and Edinburgh created atmospheres that accepted, and even celebrated, ambiguity.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Maybe that is the best definition of a work of genius: something that renders silly and futile any thought of an upgrade.”
― Éric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“This dynamic explains why we see spikes in professions at certain times and in certain places. The number of geniuses who appear in any given field at any given time is a function not of the pool of talent available but, rather, the attractiveness of the field.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“A team of researchers, led by Ravi Mehta of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that those exposed to moderate noise levels (seventy decibels) performed better on a creative-thinking exam than those exposed to either high levels of noise or complete silence. Moderate noise, Mehta believes, allows us to enter “a state of distracted, or diffused, focus.” Again, the ideal state for creative breakthroughs.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Normally, we don’t consider the audience in the genius equation. We assume that they are merely the passive recipients of the gifts that the genius bestows. They are much more than that, though. They are the appreciators of genius, and as art critic Clive Bell said, “The essential characteristic of a highly civilized society is not that it is creative but that it is appreciative.” By that measure, Vienna was the most highly civilized society to grace the planet. Mozart”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“The Scots studied the past to understand the present, and of course improve it. Like the ancient Greeks and the Chinese, they knew that those who lack a keen awareness of history are destined to “remain forever children in understanding,” as David Hume put it. Genius requires not only an accelerator but also a rearview mirror.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“We are more willing to offend someone with whom we have weak ties, and a willingness to offend is an important part of creativity. Strong ties make us feel good, make us feel that we belong, but they also constrict our worldview.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Yes, failure is part of the mix, he says, but it is a means, not an end. If you fail repeatedly, and in the same manner, you're an idiot, not a genius.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“To describe yourself as an entrepreneur or a disrupter is as meaningless as describing yourself as an athlete or a thinker. Really? What sports do you play? What do you think about?”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“Socrates says. Recognizing your ignorance is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley