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41 " Darwin and Nietzsche were the common spiritual and intellectual source for the mean-spirited and bellicose ideological assault on progress, liberalism, and democracy that fired the late-nineteenth-century campaign to preserve or rejuvenate the traditional order. Presensitized for this retreat from modernity, prominent fin-de-siècle aesthetes, engages literati, polemical publicists, academic sociologists, and last but not least, conservative and reactionary politicians became both consumers and disseminators of the untried action-ideas.Oscar Wilde and Stefan George were perhaps most representative of the aristocratizing aesthetes whose rush into dandyism or retreat into cultural monasticism was part of the outburst against bourgeois philistinism and social levelling. Their yearning for a return to an aristocratic past and their aversion to the invasive democracy of their day were shared by Thomas Mann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose nostalgia for the presumably superior sensibilities of a bygone cultivated society was part of their claim to privileged social space and position in the present. Although they were all of burgher or bourgeois descent, they extolled ultra-patrician values and poses, thereby reflecting and advancing the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the merits and necessities of elitism. Theirs was not simply an aesthetic and unpolitical posture precisely because they knowingly contributed to the exaltation of societal hierarchy at a time when this exaltation was being used to do battle against both liberty and equality. At any rate, they may be said to have condoned this partisan attack by not explicitly distancing themselves from it.Maurice Barrès, Paul Bourget, and Gabriele D'Annunzio were not nearly so self-effacing. They were not only conspicuous and active militants of antidemocratic elitism, but they meant their literary works to convert the reader to their strident persuasion. Their polemical statements and their novels promoted the cult of the superior self and nation, in which the Church performed the holy sacraments. Barrès, Bourget, and D'Annunzio were purposeful practitioners of the irruptive politics of nostalgia that called for the restoration of enlightened absolutism, hierarchical society. and elite culture in the energizing fires of war. "
42 " We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins -- they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day -- of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars -- neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience -- and for them all, man is indebted to man. "
― Robert G. Ingersoll
43 " The art of our necessities is strangeThat can make vile things precious. "
― William Shakespeare , King Lear
44 " The minority (the considered one percent of the one percent of the one percent of the one percent of humanity…) that has “worked hard” its way to obscene riches and power depriving human beings of vital necessities like water and food is a part of us, not an alien enemy.They are not the devil, nor satan.Just men (like us)Men who are taught what they know (like us)What to think (like us)Men who are lied to (like us)Manipulated (like us)Processed (like us)Indoctrinated (…. ..) "
― Haroutioun Bochnakian , The Human Consensus and The Ultimate Project Of Humanity
45 " Our hopes of avoiding the fate which threatens must...[be to make]adjustments that will be needed if we are to recover and surpass our former standards...and only if every one of us is ready to individually obey the necessities of readjustment shall we be able to get through a difficult period as free men who can choose their own way of life. Let a uniform minimum be secured to everybody by all means "
46 " Economic experts tell us that the women of America spend 80 per cent of the national income, and the largest part of this expenditure is made for the necessities and the small luxuries of life. "
― ,
47 " Much of human progress has involved reducing the time and energy, as well as the number of processes we have to engage in and think about, for each of us to obtain the necessities of life. "
― Barry Schwartz , The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
48 " If you possess the basic necessities in life, there is absolutely no reason for you to feel any sorrows. For there is someone praying to be in your place. "
49 " Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge...the individual...can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery---which the world is filled with... "
― Rainer Maria Rilke , Letters to a Young Poet
50 " The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for her; it was saying, not precisely that she did not exist but rather that it did not matter whether she existed or not, that her presence was of no consequence to the rest of the cosmos. It was a sensation that suddenly paralyzed her with dread. There had never been any question of her “mattering”; it went without saying that she mattered, because she was important to herself. But what was the part of her to which she mattered? "
― Paul Bowles , The Spider's House
51 " Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man's reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why? "
― John D. MacDonald
52 " when I look at people fighting with ammunition and weapons of all kind I ponder within me;somehow as a cynic. Ammunition's and weapons are good for war; Yes,they are better necessities to winning battle but the best choice of weapons are neither ammunition nor the strength of a battalion of army but wisdom; a pen on a paper backed by a great mind "
53 " Before I met the Jesuits, I’d never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics. "
― Pat Conroy , My Losing Season: A Memoir
54 " The act of shopping for what he needed, and of setting up the bare necessities for himself, had lulled Strike back into the familiar soldierly state of doing what needed to be done, without question or complaint. "
55 " When people can afford necessities in life, an increase in income dones not result in a significantly happier life. "
― Richard Wiseman , 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot
56 " Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to their beliefs, should be the basis for the construction of any object created by humanity become immediately absurd once we analyze all the object being manufactured today. A fork or a bed cannot come to be considered necessary for humanity's life and health, and yet retain a relative value.They are 'learned necessities.' Modern human beings are suffocating under necessities like televisions, refrigerators, etc. And in the process making it impossible to live their real lives. Obviously we are not against modern technology, but we are against any notion of the absolute necessity of objects, to the point even of doubting their real utility.'Asger Jorn "
― , The Situationists and the City: A Reader
57 " It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed. ... Great necessities call out great virtues. "
58 " If this world affords true happiness it is to be found in a home where love and confidence increase with the years where the necessities of life come without severe strain where luxuries enter only after their cost has been carefully considered. "
59 " One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude. "
― Carl Sandburg
60 " Strong men greet war tempest hard times. They wish as Pindar said to tread the floors of hell with necessities as hard as iron. "