Quote of the Moment

[hummingwolf]

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first questions. Social stagnation results not from lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

Σ

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

Σ

Due to the imperfection of man's instincts, there is a pause of faltering and groping between his perception and action. A shrinking of the pause results in some degree of dehumanization. This is as true of highly trained specialists and dogmatic true believers as of the mentally deficient.

Both iron discipline and blind faith strive to eliminate the pause before action, while the discipline that humanizes and civilizes aims at widening the interval between impulse and execution.

Art humanizes because the artist must grope and feel his way, and he never ceases to learn.

--Eric Hoffer