Ralph Barton Perry Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

A man can do his best only by confidently seeking (and perpetually missing) an unattainable perfection.

Ralph Barton Perry
The fundamental idea of modern capitalism is not the right of the individual to possess and enjoy what he has earned, but the ;thesis that the exercise of this right redounds to the general good.

Ralph Barton Perry
The greatest of all modern ideas, in its originality, in its widespread adoption, and in its far-reaching importance, is... the idea that man can make his way through all the difficulties and dangers that beset him, by means of applied science or technology.

Ralph Barton Perry
Voting is the least arduous of a citizen's duties. He has the prior and harder duty of making up his mind.

Ralph Barton Perry
I have little interest in the "conscientious objector"; but I have the greatest regard for the individual thinker. The former opposes private conviction to public policy. His inflexibility is symptomatic of will and emotion, rather than enlightenment. The latter opposes freedom of thought to uniformity of opinion.

Ralph Barton Perry
Psychology, speaking for emotion and instinct, has reduced intellect to impotence over life. Metaphysics has subordinated it to will. Bergson and his followers have charged it with falsehood and issued a general warning against its misrepresentations; while with pragmatists and instrumentalists it has sunk so low that it is dressed in livery and sent to live in the servant's quarters. It is against this last indignity in particular that I wish to speak a word of protest, to the end that the intellect may be accorded full rights within the community of human activities and interests.

Ralph Barton Perry
This insistence on "having his say upon the universe" is the profoundest motive of William James thinking as well as of his filial gratitude.

Ralph Barton Perry
The English mind is intelligent rather than intellectual. The French are intellectual in the sense that the intellect is emancipated and left free to run its own course.

Ralph Barton Perry
There is the growing influence of biology and the application of biological principles to the human faculties, thought among the rest. Man is said to have brains because they enable him to survive. Intelligence is construed as an organic function and reason as developed or evolved intelligence.

Ralph Barton Perry
… the fear of God together with a keen eye for the main chance.

Ralph Barton Perry
We are taught by biology to believe that the organism carries no passengers, but only members of the crew, each with an allotted part in keeping the ship afloat and bringing it to port.

Ralph Barton Perry
He believed that liberalism had saved the intellect at the cost of the repudiating the great historical phenomenon of religion.

Ralph Barton Perry
There is the growth of applied science, the increased interest in the control and reconstruction of nature, accompanied by a decline in the practice of meditation or the vocation of the intellectual life.

Ralph Barton Perry
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether.

Ralph Barton Perry
Is the intellect to be regarded as autonomous and self-sufficient, as pursuing ends of its own, and as judging by standards of its own? or is it to be regarded as the servant of alien interests which impose their ends and standards upon it? The modern tendency has been towards the latter or practical interpretation of the knowing faculties.

Ralph Barton Perry
Indeed I am inclined to go so far as to say that the one cause for which one may properly make war is the cause of peace.

Ralph Barton Perry
There is … no first person plural to the verb "cogito." Observation, verification, and inference are functions which are perfected only in their independent individual exercise. I am not unmindful of the importance of the corroboration of one mind by another; but such corroboration is valuable only in so far as both minds have reached their results alone. Corroboration implies the absence of collusion. The devotee of the intellect must, then, have the strength to work alone.

Ralph Barton Perry