Quotes By Herbert Read

If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.

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

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

I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.

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.

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.

You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to be true.

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

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

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

I know of no better name than Anarchism.

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.

It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.

Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.

The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

The sensitive artist knows that a bitter wind is blowing.

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.

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.

Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.

It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.

The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.

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

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.

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

The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word.

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.

But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.