Herbert Read Quotes

The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man’s spiritual vision.

But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.

The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals – its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.

Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.

It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word.

You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to be true.

A man of personality can formulate ideals, but only a man of character can achieve them.

I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.

I know of no better name than Anarchism.

The sense of historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot, however, be compromised.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values – above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.

Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.