List of Herbert Read Quotes

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 Only Sin Is Ugliness, And If We Believed This With All Our Being, All Other Activities Of The Human Spirit Could Be Left To Take Care Of Themselves.

Intellect Begins With The Observation Of Nature, Proceeds To Memorize And Classify The Facts Thus Observed, And By Logical Deduction Builds Up That Edifice Of Knowledge Properly Called Science… But Admittedly We Also Know By Feeling, And We Can Combine The Two Faculties, And Present Knowledge In The Guise Of Art.

If We Persist In Our Restless Desire To Know Everything About The Universe And Ourselves, Then We Must Not Be Afraid Of What The Artist Brings Back From His Voyage Of Discovery.

The Great Modern Heresy In Poetry Is To Confuse The Use We Make Of Words In A Poem With Modalities Of Speech...for True Poetry Is Never Speech But Always A Song.

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.

I Call Religion A Natural Authority, But It Has Usually Been Conceived As A Supernatural Authority.

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.

It Is Already Clear, After Twenty Years Of Socialism In Russia, That If You Do Not Provide Your Society With A New Religion, It Will Gradually Revert To The Old One.

What I Do Deny Is That You Can Build Any Enduring Society Without Some Such Mystical Ethos.

The Sense Of Historical Continuity, And A Feeling For Philosophical Rectitude Cannot, However, Be Compromised.

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.