R. W. K. Paterson - True Quotes

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Success necessarily emasculates the spirit of rebellion. From the point of view of the true rebel the noblest cause is a lost cause.

R. W. K. Paterson
The true rebel … may incidentally lend his support to this or that finitely realizable cause, but his unique vocation is to keep the rebellious consciousness alive. In his eyes the crucial feature of any cause is the degree to which it fosters the spirit of private defiance.

R. W. K. Paterson
It is possible to expose cowardly and degenerate hypocrisy in the name of true heroism and purity of spirit. But it is also possible to spatter mud on genuine heroes out of hatred for heroism.

R. W. K. Paterson
We cannot find out what a home is by looking at actual instances of homes, since we cannot even begin to pick these out as putatively instances of 'homes' unless we have somewhere in our minds an idea of what a 'home' is truly supposed to be. We can only recognize the false if we can compare it mentally with the true. Thus the average home cannot possibly be taken as a standard measure of what a home should be.

R. W. K. Paterson
On the one hand, the existentialism seeks to remain true to his original vision of the meaninglessness and futility of everything, since this fundamental cosmic honesty must be the basis of any attempt to live authentically; on the other hand, his stark personal reality is that he finds himself unable to appropriate the truth of nihilism existentially, unable to affirm it as his personal truth, the truth within which he will henceforth live: and it is at this point that he clutches at the artifice of commitment, hoping to save himself from nihilistic despair by a desperate leap towards a faith that will restore purpose and meaning to his shattered world.

R. W. K. Paterson
The fundamental optimism which is an element of all true nobility … is obviously related to courage since it refuses to be discouraged in the face of what sometimes seems overwhelming evidence.

R. W. K. Paterson
The true patrician distinguishes always between what he has to concern himself with, from stark necessity or the dictates of duty, and what he (and everyone else) ought ideally to be concerning himself with, in the proper realm to which he rightly belongs.

R. W. K. Paterson
Endurance means that failures have to be both accepted and refused: accepted as a sign that fresh efforts now need to be made, and refused as a signal that we may now desist from effort altogether. … Courage means that the external risks and adversities we face (as distinct from or own moral and spiritual failures) are to be assessed at their true importance: that is, for the patrician, as being in themselves of no importance, as objects not of fear but of disdain.

R. W. K. Paterson
In a sense the plebeian has no history. He drudges, recruits his pathetic strength, and reproduces drudges. This is true whether the plebeian, man or woman, works in a field, factory, or office, … whether he continues his drudgery by tilling his meagre vegetable patch or decorating his suburban bungalow, and whether he takes his ease over a cock-fight, in a Victorian gin-palace, or somnolent before a colour television set in Wolverhampton. The fact that such activities and pastimes can be painstakingly recorded and taught as history does not mean that they are worthy of notice, except as warnings and admonitions.

R. W. K. Paterson