Herbert Read

Found 10 thoughts of Herbert Read

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

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.

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.

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.

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.

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

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.

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.

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.

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.