Wisdom worth sharing, words worth remembering.
My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.
What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.
The farther a society progresses the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.
I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.
Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
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.
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.
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.
I call religion a natural authority but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.
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.
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 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.
