Quotes by Daniel Bell

“Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.”

“Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.”

“But in action, one defies ones character.”

“A radical is a prodigal son. For him, the world is a strange place whose contours have to be explored according to ones destiny. He may eventually return to the house of his elders, but the return is by choice, and not, as of those who stayed behind, of unblinking filial obedience.”

“When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.”

“Shlomo told us hed been to New Zealand recently. He told us we must have a window-seat when we land in Wellington because its the most beautiful landing anywhere in the world.”

“I prefer to do repertoire thats new for everyone.”

“The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities; the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain.”

“I am too weary to listen, too angry to hear.”

“The position of the Jews through the centuries, a stranger in every land, no voice, no ban their own, deepens this traumatic condition. For not only have they no home as their own as a people, but within each alien culture the strange gods tear away the sons and there is no home in the family.”

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. Art is the aesthetic ordering of experience to express meanings in symbolic terms, and the reordering of nature--the qualities of space and time--in new perceptual and material form. Art is an end in itself; its values are intrinsic. Technology is the instrumental ordering of human experience within a logic of efficient means, and the direction of nature to use its powers for material gain. But art and technology are not separate realms walled off from each other. Art employs techne, but for its own ends. Techne, too, is a form of art that bridges culture and social structure, and in the process reshapes both.

When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.

The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.

I am too weary to listen, too angry to hear.