Autonomous Quotes - Page 2

• It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on 'absolute' or 'autonomous' art: thus on visual art... that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not.

  Clement Greenberg

  Art, Quality, Beholder

  Clement Greenberg, Robert C. Morgan (2007). “Clement Greenberg, Late Writings”, Univ Of Minnesota Press

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• When we come to the Babylonian Gemara, we are dealing with what most people understand when they speak or write of the Talmud. Its birthplace, Babylonia, was an autonomous Jewish centre for a longer period than any other land; namely, from soon after 586 before the Christian era to the year 1040 after the Christian era - 1626 years.

  Joseph Hertz

  Christian, Writing, Years

  Isidore Epstein, Joseph Herman Hertz (1935). “The Babylonian Talmud ...: Baba Kamma”

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• Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us-simpatico dudes that we are-while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time-while the other dudes hold onto the wire. Which is not to say that no one has tried to dispense with wires. Many have, and sometimes it works-but it doesn't feel like jazz when it does. The music simply drifts away into the stratosphere of formal dialectic, beyond our social concerns.

  Dave Hickey

  Song, Nice, Two

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• I've made a few albums in such an autonomous way; it often has been exhausting. It's almost difficult to enjoy the process when you take on so much.

  Grant-Lee Phillips

  Albums, Way, Made

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• The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.

  Vaclav Havel

  War, Mean, Men

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• Misfortune occurs or can occur to anyone, of any sort of character. The eudaimonic has more resources to avoid it (being in autonomous control of his appetites and assumptions) and more resources to deal with it if it occurs (being better able to put it in perspective and maintain his own evenness of self-mastery). Tragedy as a dramatic form is meant to foster the ethos of sophrosyne or moderation, "nothing to excess"; it nurtures a sense of distance from the dominant illusions and delusions that may infect even aristoi.

  Kenny Smith

  Distance, Philosophy, Character

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• The whole dear notion of one's own Self-marvelous old free-willed, free- enterprising, autonomous, independent, isolated island of a Self- is a myth.

  Lewis Thomas

  Independent, Islands, Self

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• All men are equal and free: society by nature, and destination, is therefore autonomous and ungovernable. If the sphere of activity of each citizen is determined by the natural division of work and by the choice he makes of a profession, if the social functions are combined in such a way as to produce a harmonious effect, order results from the free activity of all men; there is no government. Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Men, Hands, Order

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• Mine is not an autonomous imagination.

  Jay McInerney

  Imagination, Mines

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• The photograph is the most perfect picture. It does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous, unconditional, devoid of style. Both in its way of informing, and in what it informs of, it is my source.

  Gerhard Richter

  Photography, Perfect, Style

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Feb 27, 2014

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• The organism cannot be regarded as simply the passive object of autonomous internal and external forces; it is also the subject of its own evolution.

  Richard Levins

  Science, Evolution, External Forces

  Richard Levins, Richard C. Lewontin (1985). “The Dialectical Biologist”, p.89, Harvard University Press

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• Human beings seem to be far more autonomous and self-governed than modern psychological theory allows for.

  Abraham Maslow

  Self, Psychological, Modern

  "Motivation and Personality". Book by Abraham Maslow, p. 123, 1954.

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• In point of fact there are a certain number of values and of forces which are of decisive importance in our world civilization: the primacy of production, the continual growth of the power of the State and the formation of the National State, the autonomous development of technics, etc. These, among others - far more than the ownership of the means of production or any totalitarian doctrine - are the constitutive elements of the modern world. So long as these elements continue to be taken for granted, the world is standing still.

  Jacques Ellul

  Taken, Mean, Civilization

  "The Presence of the Kingdom" by Jacques Ellul, translated by Olive Wyon, Seabury paperback, (p. 33), 1967.

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• What demon is our god? What name subsumes
  That act external to our sleeping selves?
  Not pleasure - it is much too broad and narrow, -
  Not sex, not for the moment love, but pride,
  And not in prowess, but pride undefined,
  Autonomous in its unthought demands,
  A bit of vanity, but mostly pride.

  J. V. Cunningham

  Sex, Sleep, Pride

  "In a Few Days Now When Two Memories Meet (1964)". "Poems Of J.V. Cunningham". Book edited by Timothy Steele, 1997.

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• The difference between romantic love and friendship love is that romantic love involves a lot of compromise. It is a very giving type of love. With friendship, you can be a little bit more autonomous. You are not expected to compromise, in the same way. Maybe that's why friendships tend to last longer.

  Olivia Wilde

  Love Is, Romantic Love, Differences

  Source: collider.com

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• I've always got the road. Stand-up makes you so autonomous and self-sufficient that it really helps with that part of show business.

  Louis C. K.

  Self, Helping, Shows

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Running, Thinking, Self

  Source: www.qiwithoutborders.org

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• I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

  Alice Walker

  Writing, Thinking, Muse

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• [Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Population, Citizens

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.147, Vintage

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• The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations.

  Eric Hoffer

  Art, Frustration, Technology

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Special, Bows, Faults

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.108, Princeton University Press

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• When you stand up for yourself and try to be autonomous and self-determining, you're called a lot of names that we all know and that are very common. You may lose your job. You may lose custody of your child. You may be blamed for the failure of your marriage even though it was the man who couldn't tolerate an equal relationship.

  Gloria Steinem

  Jobs, Children, Men

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The purpose of autonomous driving is to eliminate accidents.

  Warren Brown

  Purpose, Driving, Accidents

  "Real Wheels Live". Live Chat, live.washingtonpost.com. November 27, 2015.

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• The two greatest enemies of the individual in the modern world are communism and psychiatry. Each wages a relentless war against that which makes a person an individual: communism against the ownership of property, psychiatry against the ownership of the self (mind and body). Communists criminalize the autonomous use of capital and labor, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in the black market, especially in foreign currencies. Psychiatrists criminalize the autonomous use of the self, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in self-abuse, especially in self-medication and self-destruction.

  Thomas Szasz

  War, Self, Two

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1990). “The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary”, Open Court Publishing Company

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• If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support. Or, put another way, autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.

  Karen DeCrow

  Father, Pregnancy, Independent

  Letter to the editor by Karen DeCrow, www.nytimes.com. May 9, 1982.

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