"A person is separate from all other things and together with all other things. To understand opposites in a self, the meaning of together and separate must be seen ."

Eli Siegel Philosophy See all quotes by Eli Siegel →

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“Children are really desperate to see the world as pleasing; and their desperateness is part of a wise hope.”

“The world should be owned by the people living in it. Every person should be seen as living in a world truly his. All persons should be seen as living in a world truly theirs.”

“Aesthetics is the one fundamental means a person has of liking himself.”

“Every person in order to respect himself has to see the world as beautiful or good or acceptable.”

“No self can truly know itself and be ashamed.”

“Poetry, like Art, is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.”

Resonant Thoughts

"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war; petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause …"

— Simone Weil

Philosophy1909–1943

#politics

"The evidence of evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy , but from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairl…"

— Daniel Dennett

Philosophy1942–2024

#knowledge

"What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that I’d expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation un…"

— Kevin Rashid Johnson

Social Activism1971

#leadership

"I’m not as intellectual as my daughter. She says bigger words than I … I don’t even know what they mean… But she’s so amusing to me and it’s wonderful to be around her."

— Debbie Reynolds

Music1932–2016

#knowledge