Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MCwas an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philospher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
law jurisprudence literature
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.
army literature body
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.
literature firsts individual
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.
passion literature digestion
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.
civilization literature may
We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.
literature natural authority
I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.
ethos literature deny
What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos.
equality literature world
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.
progress literature groups
The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.
life literature dull
If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.
animal literature morality
Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.
progress literature scope
Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.
military artist civilization
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.
philosophy believe past
Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.