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The World's Greatest Thinkers Have Often Been Amateurs; For High Thinking Is The Outcome Of Fine And Independent Living, And For That A Professional Chair Offers No Special Opportunities.

-Havelock Ellis

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The World's Greatest Thinkers

Havelock Ellis

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The World's Greatest Thinkers Have Often Been Amateurs; For High Thinking Is The Outcome Of Fine And Independent Living, And For That A Professional Chair Offers No Special Opportunities.

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Men Who Know Themselves Are No Longer Fools. They Stand On The Threshold Of The Door Of Wisdom.

The Prevalence Of Suicide, Without Doubt, Is A Test Of Height In Civilization; It Means That The Population Is Winding Up Its Nervous And Intellectual System To The Utmost Point Of Tension And That Sometimes It Snaps.

In The Early Days Of Christianity The Exercise Of Chastity Was Frequently Combined With A Close And Romantic Intimacy Of Affection Between The Sexes Which Shocked Austere Moralists.

The Immense Value Of Becoming Acquainted With A Foreign Language Is That We Are Thereby Led Into A New World Of Tradition And Thought And Feeling.

The Sun, The Moon And The Stars Would Have Disappeared Long Ago... Had They Happened To Be Within The Reach Of Predatory Human Hands.

Philosophy Is A Purely Personal Matter. A Genuine Philosopher's Credo Is The Outcome Of A Single Complex Personality; It Cannot Be Transferred. No Two Persons, If Sincere, Can Have The Same Philosophy.

Had There Been A Lunatic Asylum In The Suburbs Of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ Would Infallibly Have Been Shut Up In It At The Outset Of His Public Career. That Interview With Satan On A Pinnacle Of The Temple Would Alone Have Damned Him, And Everything That Happened After Could Have Confirmed The Diagnosis. The Whole Religious Complexion Of The Modern World Is Due To The Absence From Jerusalem Of A Lunatic Asylum.

A Religion Can No More Afford To Degrade Its Devil Than To Degrade Its God.

The Mother Is The Child's Supreme Parent.

Of Woman As A Real Human Being, With Sexual Needs And Sexual Responsibilities, Morality Has Often Known Nothing.

The Aesthetic Pleasure Of Dance Is A Secondary Reflection Of The Primary, Vital Joy Of Courtship.

It Is Curious How There Seems To Be An Instinctive Disgust In Man For His Nearest Ancestors And Relations. If Only Darwin Could Conscientiously Have Traced Man Back To The Elephant Or The Lion Or The Antelope, How Much Ridicule And Prejudice Would Have Been Spared To The Doctrine Of Evolution.

The Mathematician Has Reached The Highest Rung On The Ladder Of Human Thought.

The Second Great Channel Through Which The Impulse Towards The Control Of Procreation For The Elevation Of The Race Is Entering Into Practical Life Is By The General Adoption, By The Educated—of Methods For The Prevention Of Conception Except When Conception Is Deliberately Desired.

There Is Nothing That War Has Ever Achieved That We Could Not Better Achieve Without It.

No Act Can Be Quite So Intimate As The Sexual Embrace.

The Art Of Dancing Stands At The Source Of All The Arts That Express Themselves First In The Human Person. The Art Of Building, Or Architecture, Is The Beginning Of All The Arts That Lie Outside The Person; And In The End They Unite.

The Place Where Optimism Most Flourishes Is The Lunatic Asylum.

Dancing As An Art, We May Be Sure, Cannot Die Out, But Will Always Be Undergoing A Rebirth. Not Merely As An Art, But Also As A Social Custom, It Perpetually Emerges Afresh From The Soul Of The People.

It Has Always Been Difficult For Man To Realize That His Life Is All An Art. It Has Been More Difficult To Conceive It So Than To Act It So. For That Is Always How He Has More Or Less Acted It.

Courtship, Properly Understood, Is The Process Whereby Both The Male And The Female Are Brought Into That State Of Sexual Tumescence Which Is A More Or Less Necessary Condition For Sexual Intercourse. The Play Of Courtship Cannot, Therefore, Be Considered To Be Definitely Brought To An End By The Ceremony Of Marriage; It May More Properly Be Regarded As The Natural Preliminary To Every Act Of Coitus.

One Can Know Nothing Of Giving Aught That Is Worthy To Give Unless One Also Knows How To Take.

In Philosophy, It Is Not The Attainment Of The Goal That Matters, It Is The Things That Are Met With By The Way

The Modesty Of Women, Which, In Its Most Primitive Form Among Animals, Is Based On Sexual Periodicity, Is, With That Periodicity, An Essential Condition Of Courtship.

Sex Lies At The Root Of Life, And We Can Never Learn To Reverence Life Until We Know How To Understand Sex.

The Family Only Represents One Aspect, However Important An Aspect, Of A Human Being's Functions And Activities. A Life Is Beautiful And Ideal Or The Reverse, Only When We Have Taken Into Our Consideration The Social As Well As The Family Relationship.

I Regard Sex As The Central Problem Of Life. And Now That The Problem Of Religion Has Practically Been Settled, And That The Problem Of Labor Has At Least Been Placed On A Practical Foundation, The Question Of Sex—with The Racial Questions That Rest On It—stands Before The Coming Generations As The Chief Problem For Solution. Sex Lies At The Root Of Life, And We Can Never Learn To Reverence Life Until We Know How To Understand Sex.

Sexual Pleasure, Wisely Used And Not Abused, May Prove The Stimulus And Liberator Of Our Finest And Most Exalted Activities.

Education, Whatever Else It Should Or Should Not Be, Must Be An Inoculation Against The Poisons Of Life And An Adequate Equipment In Knowledge And Skill For Meeting The Chances Of Life.

To Live Remains An Art Which Everyone Must Learn, And Which No One Can Teach.

A Man Must Not Swallow More Beliefs Than He Can Digest.

There Is Nothing More Fragile Than Civilization.

We Cannot Remain Consistent With The World Save By Growing Inconsistent With Our Past Selves.

On The Threshold Of The Moral World We Meet The Idea Of Freedom, 'one Of The Weightiest Concepts Man Has Ever Formed,' Once A Dogma, In The Course Of Time A Hypothesis, Now In The Eyes Of Many A Fiction, Yet We Cannot Do Without It, Even Although We May Be Firmly Convinced That Our Acts Are Determined By Laws That Cannot Be Broken.

It Is On Our Failures That We Base A New And Different And Better Success.

The Sexual Regions Constitute A Particularly Vulnerable Spot, And Remain So Even In Man, And The Need For Their Protection Which Thus Exists Conflicts With The Prominent Display Required For Sexual Allurement. This End Is Far More Effectively Attained, With Greater Advantage And Less Disadvantage, By Concentrating The Chief Ensigns Of Sexual Attractiveness On The Upper And More Conspicuous Parts Of The Body. This Method Is Well-nigh Universal Among Animals As Well As In Man.

Man Lives By Imagination.

Liberty Is Always Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business

Heroes Exterminate Each Other For The Benefit Of People Who Are Not Heroes.

Life Is Livable Because We Know That Wherever We Go Most Of The People We Meet Will Be Restrained In Their Actions Towards Us By An Almost Instinctive Network Of Taboos.

The Mother Is Really A More Immediate Parent Than The Father Because One Is Born From The Mother, And The First Experience Of Any Infant Is The Mother.

The World's Greatest Thinkers Have Often Been Amateurs; For High Thinking Is The Outcome Of Fine And Independent Living, And For That A Professional Chair Offers No Special Opportunities.

Mankind Is Becoming A Single Unit, And That For A Unit To Fight Against Itself Is Suicide.

It Is Only The Great Men Who Are Truly Obscene. If They Had Not Dared To Be Obscene, They Could Never Have Dared To Be Great.

Thinking In Its Lower Grades, Is Comparable To Paper Money, And In Its Higher Forms It Is A Kind Of Poetry.

The Promised Land Always Lies On The Other Side Of A Wilderness.

Einstein Is Notmerely An Artist In His Moments Of Leisure And Play, As A Great Statesman May Play Golf Or A Great Soldier Grow Orchids. He Retains The Same Attitude In The Whole Of His Work. He Traces Science To Its Roots In Emotion, Which Is Exactly Where Art Is Also Rooted.

However Well Organised The Foundations Of Life May Be, Life Must Always Be Full Of Risks.

Birth-control Is Effecting, And Promising To Effect, Many Functions In Our Social Life.

Charm" — Which Means The Power To Effect Work Without Employing Brute Force — Is Indispensable To Women. Charm Is A Woman's Strength Just As Strength Is A Man's Charm.

So Far As Business And Money Are Concerned, A Country Gains Nothing By A Successful War, Even Though That War Involves The Acquisition Of Immense New Provinces.

What We Call Progress Is The Exchange Of One Nuisance For Another Nuisance.

Progress And Change

A Sublime Faith In Human Imbecility Has Seldom Led Those Who Cherish It Astray.

There Is Held To Be No Surer Test Of Civilization Than The Increase Per Head Of The Consumption Of Alcohol And Tobacco. Yet Alcohol And Tobacco Are Recognizable Poisons, So That Their Consumption Has Only To Be Carried Far Enough To Destroy Civilization Altogether.

It Is Becoming Clear That The Old Platitudes Can No Longer Be Maintained, And That If We Wish To Improve Our Morals We Must First Improve Our Knowledge.

Still, Whether We Like It Or Not, The Task Of Speeding Up The Decrease Of The Human Population Becomes Increasingly Urgent.

It Is The Little Writer Rather Than The Great Writer Who Seems Never To Quote, And The Reason Is That He Is Never Really Doing Anything Else.

...aesthetic Values Are Changed Under The Influence Of Sexual Emotion; From The Lover's Point Of View Many Things Are Beautiful Which Are Unbeautiful From The Point Of View Of Him Who Is Not A Lover, And The Greater The Degree To Which The Lover Is Swayed By His Passion The Greater The Extent To Which His Normal Aesthetic Standard Is Liable To Be Modified.

The Absence Of Flaw In Beauty Is Itself A Flaw.

All Arguments Are Meaningless Until We Gain Personal Experience. One Must Win One's Own Place In The Spiritual World Painfully And Alone. There Is No Other Way Of Salvation. The Promised Land Always Lies On The Other Side Of A Wilderness.

When Love Is Suppressed Hate Takes Its Place.

What We Call 'morals' Is Simply Blind Obedience To Words Of Command.

Socialism Also Brings Us Up Against The Hard Rock Of Eugenic Fact Which, If We Neglect It, Will Dash Our Most Beautiful Social Construction To Fragments.

If Men And Women Are To Understand Each Other, To Enter Into Each Other's Nature With Mutual Sympathy, And To Become Capable Of Genuine Comradeship, The Foundation Must Be Laid In Youth.

The Sanitary And Mechanical Age We Are Now Entering Makes Up For The Mercy It Grants To Our Sense Of Smell By The Ferocity With Which It Assails Our Sense Of Hearing.

The Largely Objective Character Of Beauty Is Further Indicated By The Fact That To A Considerable Extent Beauty Is The Expression Of Health. A Well And Harmoniously Developed Body, Tense Muscles, An Elastic And Finely Toned Skin, Bright Eyes, Grace And Animation Of Carriage- All These Things Which Are Essential To Beauty Are The Conditions Of Health.

The Conflict Of Forces And The Struggle Of Opposing Wills Are Of The Essence Of Our Universe And Alone Hold It Together.

It Is Here [in Mathematics] That The Artist Has The Fullest Scope Of His Imagination.

Those Persons Who Are Burning To Display Heroism May Rest Assured That The Course Of Social Evolution Will Offer Them Every Opportunity.

The Romantic Embrace Can Only Be Compared With Music And With Prayer.

Beauty Is The Child Of Love.

Here, Where We Reach The Sphere Of Mathematics, We Are Among Processes Which Seem To Some The Most Inhuman Of All Human Activities And The Most Remote From Poetry. Yet It Is Here That The Artist Has The Fullest Scope Of His Imagination.

At The Present Day The Crude Theory Of The Sexual Impulse Held On One Side, And The Ignorant Rejection Of Theory Altogether On The Other Side, Are Beginning To Be Seen As Both Alike Unjustified.

Imagination Is A Poor Substitute For Experience.

The Husband - By Primitive Instinct Partly, Certainly By Ancient Tradition - Regards Himself As The Active Partner In Matters Of Love And His Own Pleasure As Legitimately The Prime Motive For Activity.

Where There Is Most Labour There Is Not Always Most Life.

For Every Fresh Stage In Our Lives We Need A Fresh Education, And There Is No Stage For Which So Little Educational Preparation Is Made As That Which Follows The Reproductive Period.

Even The Most Scientific Investigator In Science, The Most Thoroughgoing Positivist, Cannot Dispense With Fiction; He Must At Least Make Use Of Categories, And They Are Already Fictions, Analogical Fictions, Or Labels, Which Give Us The Same Pleasure As Children Receive When They Are Told The "name" Of A Thing.

Pain And Death Are Part Of Life. To Reject Them Is To Reject Life Itself.

All Progress In Literary Style Lies In The Heroic Resolve To Cast Aside Accretions And Exuberances, All The Conventions Of A Past Age That Were Once Beautiful Because Alive And Are Now False Because Dead.

Dreams Are Real As Long As They Last. Can We Say More Of Life?

The Average Husband Enjoys The Total Effect Of His Home But Is Usually Unable To Contribute Any Of The Details Of Work And Organisation That Make It Enjoyable.

Every Man Of Genius Sees The World At A Different Angle From His Fellows, And There Is His Tragedy.

There Is A Very Intimate Connection Between Hypnotic Phenomena And Religion.

The Greatest Task Before Civilization At Present Is To Make Machines What They Ought To Be, The Slaves, Instead Of The Masters Of Men.

There Has Never Been Any Country At Every Moment So Virtuous And So Wise That It Has Not Sometimes Needed To Be Saved From Itself.

To Make A Mountain Out Of A Mole-hill.

All Civilization Has From Time To Time Become A Thin Crust Over A Volcano Of Revolution.

The More Rapidly A Civilization Progresses, The Sooner It Dies For Another To Rise In Its Place.

All The Art Of Living Lies In A Fine Mingling Of Letting Go And Holding On.

Every Artist Writes His Own Autobiography.

Civilized Men Arrived In The Pacific, Armed With Alcohol, Syphilis, Trousers, And The Bible.

Every Ist Writes His Own Autobiography.

Failing To Find In Women Exactly The Same Kind Of Sexual Emotions, As They Find In Themselves, Men Have Concluded That There Are None There At All.

We Cannot Be Sure That We Ought Not To Regard The Most Criminal Country As That Which In Some Aspects Possesses The Highest Civilization.

Greek Is The Embodiment Of The Fluent Speech That Runs Or Soars, The Speech Of A People Which Could Not Help Giving Winged Feet Toits God Of Art. Latin Is The Embodiment Of The Weighty And Concentrated Speech Which Is Hammered And Pressed And Polished Into The Shape Of Its Perfection, As The Ethically Minded Romans Believed That The Soul Also Should Be Wrought.

Dancing And Building Are The Two Primary And Essential Arts. The Art Of Dancing Stands At The Source Of All The Arts That Expressthemselves First In The Human Person. The Art Of Building, Or Architecture, Is The Beginning Of All The Arts That Lie Outside The Person; And In The End They Unite. Music, Acting, Poetry Proceed In The One Mighty Stream; Sculpture, Painting, All The Arts Of Design, In The Other. There Is No Primary Art Outside These Two Arts, For Their Origin Is Far Earlier Than Man Himself; And Dancing Came First.

Dancing Is The Loftiest, The Most Moving, The Most Beautiful Of The Arts, Because It Is No Mere Translation Or Abstraction From Life; It Is Life Itself.

I Always Seem To Have A Vague Feeling That He Is A Satan Among Musicians, A Fallen Angel In The Darkness Who Is Perpetually Seeking To Fight His Way Back To Happiness.

Charm Is A Woman's Strength Just As Strength Is A Man's Charm.

The By-product Is Sometimes More Valuable Than The Product.

Reproduction Is So Primitive And Fundamental A Function Of Vital Organisms That The Mechanism By Which It Is Assured Is Highly Complex And Not Yet Clearly Understood. It Is Not Necessarily Connected With Sex, Nor Is Sex Necessarily Connected With Reproduction.

No Faith Is Our Own That We Have Not Arduously Won.

The Parents Have Not Only To Train Their Children: It Is Of At Least Equal Importance That They Should Train Themselves.

The Relation Of The Individual Person To The Species He Belongs To Is The Most Intimate Of All Relations.

The Omnipresent Process Of Sex, As It Is Woven Into The Whole Texture Of Our Man's Or Woman's Body, Is The Pattern Of All The Process Of Our Life.

There Can Be No Sexual Love Without Lust; But, On The Other Hand, Until The Currents Of Lust In The Organism Have Been Irradiatedas To Affect Other Parts Of The Psychic Organism--at The Least The Affections And The Social Feelings--it Is Not Yet Sexual Love. Lust, The Specific Sexual Impulse, Is Indeed The Primary And Essential Element In This Synthesis, For It Alone Is Adequate To The End Of Reproduction, Not Only In Animals But In Men. But It Is Not Until Lust Is Expanded And Irradiated That It Develops Into The Exquisite And Enthralling Flower Of Love.

The Great Writer Finds Style As The Mystic Finds God, In His Own Soul.

Jealousy, That Dragon Which Slays Love Under The Pretence Of Keeping It Alive.

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