Jon Johnson > Jon's Quotes

“Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism.”
― Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

“If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?”
― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

“Believe in life! Always human beings will progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Spinoza

“Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.”
― John Dee, The Hieroglyphic Monad

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.”
― Spinoza

“All concepts of politics, of whatever kind, are about conflict──how to contain it, or abolish it.”
― Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics