#compulsion

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory. ↗

— Plato

#man #memory #mix #ought #pursued

My compulsion is to create things. ↗

— Julian Schnabel

#create #things

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#anything #assist #compulsion #ethical #help

...she grasped the terrible truth that love can never be compelled, from man, from sprite, from beast; that one who loves, however she longs for requital, however long she waits, may receive in return the reverse of what she gives, the dark side of the moon. ↗

— Thomas Burnett Swann

#love #reciprocity #requital #love

We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them. ↗

— Chauncey Wright

#compulsion #ignorance #nothing #receive #resist

For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer. ↗

— Xenophon

#any #beauty #compulsion #dancer #does

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#destiny #fate #life

The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion. The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability. ↗

— Herodotus

#athenians #compulsion #persuasion #poverty #money

One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity. ↗

— Rem Koolhaas

#excessive #offset #our #return #simplicity

The modern West has been deeply split about freedom and responsibility. On the one hand, it has championed human freedom in many forms - human rights, sexual freedom, political liberty, freedom to choose in many spheres. On the other hand, many of its most intelligent members have not believed that people are free at all, and have devoted great efforts to show that really we are the product of our genes, our unconscious drives, our education, economic pressures, or other forms of conditioning. ↗

— David F. Ford

#freedom #modernity #paradox #education