Compulsion Quotes
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Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
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More Compulsion Quotes
The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.
max horkheimer— p. 34 ("The End of Reason" (1941))
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
sinclair lewis— Letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith
Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.
yann martel— Chapter 4, p. 17
I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.
paul newman— Quoted in John Skow, "Verdict on a Superstar," Time (1982-12-06)
Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same... The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.
james fitzjames stephen— Ch. 2 : The Liberty of Thought and Discussion
We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.
eugen drewermann— "Heil und Heilung - Theologie und Psychoanalyse," speech at a conference of therapists in Basel, Switzerland (1977-05-21)
Once efficiency is universally accepted as a rule, it becomes an inner compulsion and weighs like a sense of sin, simply because no one can ever be efficient enough, just as no one can ever be virtuous enough. And this new sense of sin only contributes further to the enervation of leisure, for the rich as well as the poor. The difficulty of carrying on a leisure-oriented tradition of culture in a work-oriented society is enough in itself to keep the present crisis in our culture unresolved.
Clement Greenberg— "The Plight of Culture" (1953), pp. 31-32
I think that it is a fallacy to suppose that helpful cooperation in the future will be assured by the attempted compulsion of an inflexible rule. Rather will such cooperation depend upon the fostering of firm friendships springing from an appreciation of community ideals, interests, and purposes, and such friendships are more likely to be promoted by freedom of conference than by the effort to create hard and fast engagements.
charles evans hughes— Opposing Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations which would obligate members of the League of Nations to collective response. As quoted in Autobiographical Notes of Charles Hughes (1973) edited by D. J. Danelski and J. S. Tulchin.
It must be agreed that in most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.
samuel johnson— September 23, 1777, p. 363.
Can the mind become completely still without coercion, without compulsion, without discipline?
jiddu krishnamurti— 7th Public Discussion, Saanen, Switzerland (10 August 1971)
In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.
rollo may— p. 166 (Man’s Search for Himself (1953))
I am free by compulsion, whether I wish to be or not.
josé ortega y gasset— “Man has no nature”
In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.
george orwell— "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," Polemic (September/October 1946) - Full text online
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato— 536e (Book VII)
The rhythmic pattern of the poem, which forces continuity of attention – incites a pleasurable compulsion to ‘follow’ – is either a tried metrical suasion-contrivance or a specially invented pattern of physical insistences, equally, if not more, binding in its effect on the reader. From a straight linguistic point of view, there is room for wonder if there is not latent vice in this environment in which pleasurable physically-compelled responses, produced by incidents of poetic utterance, are identified with the Good.
laura riding— "The Promise of Words" in London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p.23
In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
john lancaster spalding— p. 233 (Aphorisms and Reflections (1901))
The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.
— Eric Hoffer, "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'", The New York Times Magazine (April 25, 1971), p. 52.
Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
— Book I, 1369.a5
— Variant: All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire
Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly without our own control.
— Book I, ch. 6. (Discourses)
Right or community of blood was not the bond of union between them, so much as interest or compulsion as the case may be.
— Book VII, 7.57-[1]
There is no compulsion in religion.
— Sura 2:256
Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.
— Falstaff, scene iv
The nearer we come to the full military suppression of the bourgeoisie, the more dangerous becomes to us the high flood of petty-bourgeois Anarchism. And the struggle against these elements cannot be waged with propaganda and agitation alone. … The struggle must also be waged by applying force and compulsion.
— Vladimir Lenin, as quoted in The Guillotine At Work : Twenty Years of Terror In Russia (1940) by Grigori? Petrovich Maksimov, p. 38
Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government.
— Johann Most, in The Social Monster : A Paper on Communism and Anarchism (1890)
I have with me two gods, Persuasion and compulsion.
themistocles— As quoted in The Columbia Book of Quotations (1993) edited by R. Andrews, p. 894.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
john milton— John Milton, Arcades, line 68.
Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary Between the love - deed -Yes and the power -deed-No And pressing forward honor reality . We cannot avoid Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion To afflict the world , So let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.
— Martin Buber, in "Power and Love" (1926)
