Gray's Anatomy Quotes

“All prevailing philosophies embody the fiction that human life can be altered at will. Better aim for the impossible, they say, than submit to fate. Invariably, the result is a cult of human self-assertion that soon ends in farce. The line of thinking that is traced in this book runs in an opposite direction—not only in questioning the idea of progress but also, and more fundamentally, in rejecting the idea that it is only through action that life can be meaningful. Politics is only a small part of human existence, and the human animal only a very small part of the world. Science and technology have given us powers we never had before, but not the ability to refashion our existence as we wish. Poetry and religion are more realistic guides to life.”
― John N. Gray, Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings

“The liberal ideal of personal autonomy is the idea of being part-author of one’s life. For some, the pursuit of autonomy comes into conflict with allegiance to an established community. For others, it is in tension with the freedom to respond to the needs of the present. For all these kinds of people, ‘traditional’, ‘liberal’ and ‘post-modern’, ethical life is inescapably hybrid.”
― John Gray, Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings

“The notion of a ‘Western tradition’ in which these irreconcilable elements were once fused cannot withstand philosophical – or historical – scrutiny. There was never a coherent synthesis of these values, nor could there have been. Still, for many centuries, these diverse inheritances were subordinated in European societies to a single ethical ideal. With all its doctrinal variations, and the many prudent allowances it made for the intractability of human nature, the Christian ideal of life succeeded in subjugating or marginalizing others that had been part of the European inheritance for centuries or millennia.”
― John Gray, Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings