Dimitris

“Liberalism. . . tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negative: the artificial, mechanized or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.”
― T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture

“There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“We finite beings with the infinite spirit are born only to suffer and rejoice, and one could almost say that the exceptional ones attain joy through suffering.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven