Category: Thought

[T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

José Ortega y Gasset, Chapter XIII: The Greatest Danger, The State, The Revolt of the Masses, 1929.

The biggest victory is one I’m going to have in a couple months. Up till now, I’ve basically been laying the groundwork.

Curly Haugland, as quoted in “The One Man Who Could Stop Donald Trump,” Erick Trickey, Politico, May 9, 2016.

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is ‘mass’ or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself ‘just like everybody,’ and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1929.

We must be severe, not only with ourselves, but with other also; exigent, not only with ourselves, but with others also; and so, on the contrary, benevolent not only towards others, but also toward ourselves; compassionate, not only toward others, but also towards this instrument of labour that we carry about with us and of which we sometimes demand too much; that is, our empirical individuality. Reality is neither democratic nor aristocratic, but both together; it abhors the privilege of some over others as much as that equality, according to which each one must have the same value as the other at every moment.

Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic, trans. Douglas Ainslie (1913, 1967), p. 429.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our other faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or to break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands. A strange thing, indeed, the existence in man of this mental activity which substitutes one thing for another — from an urge not so much to get at the first as to get rid of the second.

José Ortega y Gasset, “Taboo and Metaphor,” The Dehumanization of Art, 1925.

Poetry is produced not by the mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. It is the primary activity of the human mind.

Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, trans. R. G. Collingwood (London 1923).

The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible.

William H. Prescott, “Chateaubriand’s English Literature” (1839), p. 245.

Liberty is not the function of the bourgeoisie or any other economy but rather the human soul and its deep needs; it possesses qualities and origins that are not economic but instead moral and religious. . . .

Benedetto Croce, as quoted in As If God Existed: Religion and Liberty in the History of Italy, by Maurizio Viroli, (Princeton University Press, 2012).

A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism.

Simón Bolívar, Letter from Jamaica, 1815.

All the following want for grace: the poet, who calls it inspiration; the philosopher, who calls it idea; the statesman, who calls it sure eyesight or firm hand; the man of war, who calls it boldness or impetus. Grace appears all of a sudden even to the humblest of men you can imagine, who is so much oppressed by tedium that he sometimes does not know how to get through it. It appears perhaps in the form of a sun ray, or a landscape fresh with verdancy and dew, which infuses new joy and love of life. Who, except for someone vain — and even this only in his empty words — could ever ‘do it alone’ and renounce the assistance of grace?

Benedetto Croce, as quoted in As If God Existed: Religion and Liberty in the History of Italy, by Maurizio Viroli, (Princeton University Press, 2012).