Herbert Read Quotes

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Herbert Read

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 4, 1893

The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.

Herbert Read

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

Herbert Read

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

Herbert Read

The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.

Herbert Read

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

Herbert Read

Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.

Herbert Read

Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.

Herbert Read

What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.

Herbert Read

Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.

Herbert Read

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.

Herbert Read

The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.

Herbert Read

I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.

Herbert Read

The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves.

Herbert Read

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

Herbert Read

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Herbert Read

Man is everywhere still in chains.

Herbert Read

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

Herbert Read

The sense of historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot, however, be compromised.

Herbert Read

I know of no better name than Anarchism.

Herbert Read

In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

Herbert Read