Possession Quotes - Page 16

• Freedom is neither a legal invention nor a philosophical conquest, the cherished possession of civilizations more valid than others because they alone have been able to create or preserve it. It is the outcome of an objective relationship between the individual and the space he occupies, between the consumer and the resources at his disposal.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Philosophical, Civilization, Space

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.145, Penguin

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• In particular, it is absurd to hope to banish envy of other people's possessions or fortunes, if only because the spirit of envy can lead to emulation and ambition and have positive consequences.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Ambition, People, Envy

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.74, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• God reveals Himself to a devotee who feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions: the attraction of worldly possessions for the worldly man, the child's attraction for its mother, and the husband's attraction for the chaste wife. If one feels drawn to Him by the combined force of these three attractions, then through it one can attain Him.

  Ramakrishna

  Mother, Children, Husband

  Ramakrishna, Mahendra Nath Gupta (1942). “The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna”, Ramakrishna Vivekanada Center

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• The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Honor, Wealth, Distinction

  Thorstein Veblen (1993). “A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism”, p.18, M.E. Sharpe

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• Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Lying, Intellectual, Quests

  Richard Hofstadter (2012). “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”, p.30, Vintage

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• The property of manliness in a man is a great possession, but perhaps there is none that is less understood, which is more generally accorded where it does not exist, nor more frequently disallowed where it prevails.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Doe, Understood

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.2078, e-artnow

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• Our vulnerability [to ressentiment] is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right" to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Rights, Hands, Differences

  "The Art of Life". Book by Zygmunt Bauman, 2013.

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• The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science; and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever.

  William Whewell

  Needs, Generations, Heirs

  William Whewell (1857). “History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest to the Present Time”, p.3

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• I feel quite unable to adopt the opinion that the moment goods pass into the possession of the consumer they cease altogether to have the attributes of capital.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Opinion, Moments, Attributes

  William Stanley Jevons (1871). “The Theory of Political Economy”, p.245

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• Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it.

  Jacques Ellul

  Men, Light, Technique

  "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul, translated by John Wilkinson, (p. 142), 1964.

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• Communities now find themselves in possession of improvements [resulting from the WPA] which even in 1929 they would have thought themselves presumptuous to dream of... [but] everywhere there had been an overhauling of the word presumptuous. We are beginning to wonder if it is not presumptuous to take for granted that some people should have much, and some should have nothing; that some people are less important than others and should die earlier; that the children of the comfortable should be taller and fatter, as a matter of right, than the other children of the poor.

  Harry Hopkins

  Dream, Children, Should Have

  "Spending to Save: The Complete Story of Relief". Book by Harry Lloyd Hopkins, p. 184, 1936.

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• The stages of human development are to strive for:
  (1) Besitz [Possession]
  (2) Wissen [Knowledge]
  (3) Können [Ability]
  (4) Sein [Being].

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Development, Strive, Stage

  "A Life of Erwin Schrödinger". Book by Walter Moore, 1994.

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• The deer aren't our prey or our possessions -- they're us. They're us at one point in the cycle of life and we're them at another point in the cycle. The deer are twice your parents, for your mother and father are deer, and the deer that gave you its life today was mother and father to you as well, since you wouldn't be here if it weren't for that deer.

  Daniel Quinn

  Mother, Father, Cycle Of Life

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• When a tree, a natural product, is felled, is society put into possession of no greater produce than that of the mere labour of the woodman?

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Tree, Natural, Produce

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.76

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• Happiness is the possession of the excellence proper to us, and of the power subservient to it.

  Xenocrates

  Excellence, Subservient

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• It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Taken, Mathematics

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 52), 1991.

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• By getting as close to the true idea of religion, of spirituality as it is possible for us to get.. ...we would be in possession of the only tangible relationship tot the deity in things.

  Marsden Hartley

  Ideas, Would Be, Tangible

  "Marsden Hartley". Book by Gail R. Scott, p. 44, 1988.

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• Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

  Walter Benjamin

  Fall, Taken, People

  "Illuminations". Book by Walter Benjamin, 1950.

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• The pearl whose possession separates man from beast, the pearl which is the rarest find - the best among virtues - is forgiveness.

  Kedar Joshi

  Forgiveness, Men, Pearls

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• Every strong conviction ends by taking possession of us; it overcomes and absorbs us, and tears us ruthlessly from everything else. Has the Cross so seized upon your life?

  L. E. Maxwell

  Strong, Tears, Overcoming

  St. Augustine, Dr. Howard Taylor, Mrs. Howard Taylor, Apostolic Fathers, J. Oswald Sanders (2010). “Moody Classics Complete Set: Includes 19 Classics of the Faith in a Single Volume”, p.2318, Moody Publishers

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• It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Whoever does not, sometimes or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Sweet, People, Giving

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus: A Dual Language Edition”, p.223, Vintage

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• We try to evade the question of existence with property, prestige, power, possession, production, fun, and, ultimately, by trying to forget that we- that I- exist. No matter how much he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas , if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God.

  Erich Fromm

  Wisdom, Religious, Fun

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• It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his own imagination; every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or powers of enduring.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mean, Reality, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.28

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• Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason may be described as the candle in the man's hand, to which revelation brings the necessary flame.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Men, Flames, Hands

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.26

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• Good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages its possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never gains supremacy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Success, Safety

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British poets completed by W. Hazlitt”, p.220

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