Theodore Roszak quotes

The macho is in the metaphors, not the phenomena. (Theodore Roszak)
We are discovering that natural philosophy needs bonds of sympathy as well as precision of intellect. View quote
Theodore Roszak
Nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope. View quote
Theodore Roszak
My hope is that people who grew up on J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, the folk music of Pete Seeger, the protest ballads of Country Joe, the anarchic insolence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the biting satire of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, the acid rock of Bob Dylan, the sociology of Paul Goodman and Herbert Marcuse, the Summer of Love and the Days of Rage, will not be content to spend their retirement years on cruise ships or feeding their Social Security checks into slot machines at the nearest casino. View quote
Theodore Roszak
That is what Castle's work needed: a beginner's eye. View quote
Theodore Roszak
The epidemic psychosis of our time is the lie of believing we have no ethical obligation to our planetary home. View quote
Theodore Roszak
When theoretical physicists censor the public's spontaneous visualizing response by warning us we must not try to picture the underlying nature of the world, whether atoms or quarks or preons, they are drawing upon an intellectual discipline devised by Calvin. Reality is beyond the senses; only the rigorously logical mind, leaping bravely into the intangible, can grasp it. No images. View quote
Theodore Roszak
Science, in broad outline, can be divided into three parts: the study of the vast, the study of the tiny, and the study of life which... acts as audience to both the vast and the tiny. View quote
Theodore Roszak
In the technocracy, nothing is any longer small or simple or readily apparent to the nontechnical man. Instead, the scale of intricacy or all human activities... transcends the competence of the amateurish citizen and inexorably demands the attention of specially trained experts. ...even the most seemingly personal aspects of life. ...In the absence of expertise, the great [productive} mechanism would surely break down, leaving us in the midst of chaos and poverty. View quote
Theodore Roszak
You and I, whole human beings, are, so Richard Dawkins insists, merely "survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." At its most fundamental level, he finds the living universe populated by John Wayne genetics and Clint Eastwood chemicals. View quote
Theodore Roszak
"Technocracy," in The Meaning of Technology. Selected Readings from American Sources (2004) ed. Montserrat Ginés Giber. (Theodore Roszak)
The truth of the matter is no society, not even our severely secularized technocracy, can ever dispense with mystery and magical ritual. View quote
Theodore Roszak
In a time when so many artists have learned to confabulate with extremes of horror and alienation, the most daring thing an artist can do is to fill a book, a gallery, or a theater with joy, hope, and beauty. View quote
Theodore Roszak
Since the late 19th century, aging has been the normal state of all industrial societies; it is a sustained trend. Societies designed to cater to the needs of aging populations will soon become the accepted political condition of our species. Acknowledging that fact will, at some point, slide so smoothly into the conventional wisdom that future generations may not realize that this is a major new feature of modern life, this is different, this is not what human culture was ever meant to be-and it all started now. View quote
Theodore Roszak
The alchemists of the ancient world had a teaching: "As above, so below." Four words that contain an entire cosmology.... a grand cosmic unity, a harmony resounding in the mind of God. View quote
Theodore Roszak
Life... becomes an anomalous puzzle that cannot be "explained" until scientists in laboratories find a way to animate the dead matter that is the normal condition of things. This amounts to saying that life has no "place" in the world until men-the gender that originally dominated the world and still does-can create it... in a laboratory and express it in a formula. Only then will we "understand" what life is. View quote
Theodore Roszak
The Earth's cry for rescue from the punishing weight of the industrial system we have created is our own cry for a scale and quality of life that will free each of us to become the complete person that we were meant to be. View quote
Theodore Roszak
This is the point at which the "rape of nature" ceases to be a metaphor. It is an accurate depiction... rape stems from a compulsive need to control, to control completely. ...From ...inadequacy flow fear, anger, the need to punish and subjugate. ...the objective is... to dominate this elusive, troubling female so that she will do what she is ordered to do. ...that requires the objectification of the other; she must become what he wants her to become. View quote
Theodore Roszak
The bond of sympathy, like the artist's eye for beauty, may stretch across many divisions. View quote
Theodore Roszak
Reduced to the statistical permutations of genes, life became "nothing but" the marriage of chance and selection. View quote
Theodore Roszak
It will be enough to define the technocracy as that society in which those who govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts who, in turn, justify themselves by appeal to scientific forms of knowledge. And beyond the authority of science, there is no appeal. (Theodore Roszak)
Goethe wondered at what point our instruments might be creating what we think we see out there in the world. ...his question is still a good one. Every science of observation must take care not to get lost among its own artifacts. View quote
Theodore Roszak
When it is another human being who is being... objectified, everybody (except the rapist) can clearly see the act as a crime. But when we objectify the natural world, turning it into a dead or stupid thing, we have another word for that. Science. View quote
Theodore Roszak
It is characteristic of the technocracy to render itself invisible. View quote
Theodore Roszak
The joy of this quest is not in triumph over others, but in the search for the qualities we share with them and for our uniqueness, which raises us above all competition. View quote
Theodore Roszak

Theodore Roszak

Theodore Roszak - Image
Photo: ELApro, CC BY-SA 4.0
Born: November 15, 1933
Died: July 5, 2011
Quotes count: 43