Theodore Roszak Quotes

The joy of this quest is not in triumph over others, but in the search for the qualities we share with them and for our uniqueness, which raises us above all competition.

Science, in broad outline, can be divided into three parts: the study of the vast, the study of the tiny, and the study of life which... acts as audience to both the vast and the tiny.

"Technocracy," in The Meaning of Technology. Selected Readings from American Sources (2004) ed. Montserrat Ginés Giber

In a time when so many artists have learned to confabulate with extremes of horror and alienation, the most daring thing an artist can do is to fill a book, a gallery, or a theater with joy, hope, and beauty.

Boyle was among the first who recognized that the withdrawal of sympathy licenses conduct that would not be permissible within an animistic vision of nature. ...The vision that he and his scientific colleagues were creating was fast becoming a mathematical abstraction lacking color, odor, texture, and personality. ...The task of the natural philosopher, we are told, is to "probe," "penetrate," and "pierce" nature in all her "mysterious," secret," and "intimate recesses."

We are discovering that natural philosophy needs bonds of sympathy as well as precision of intellect.

This is the point at which the "rape of nature" ceases to be a metaphor. It is an accurate depiction... rape stems from a compulsive need to control, to control completely. ...From ...inadequacy flow fear, anger, the need to punish and subjugate. ...the objective is... to dominate this elusive, troubling female so that she will do what she is ordered to do. ...that requires the objectification of the other; she must become what he wants her to become.

Women enter the sciences, but "womanliness"—those qualities that have always been stereotypically attributed to females—is not yet entirely welcome, whether it comes into the laboratory wearing pants or a skirt.

My hope is that people who grew up on J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, the folk music of Pete Seeger, the protest ballads of Country Joe, the anarchic insolence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the biting satire of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, the acid rock of Bob Dylan, the sociology of Paul Goodman and Herbert Marcuse, the Summer of Love and the Days of Rage, will not be content to spend their retirement years on cruise ships or feeding their Social Security checks into slot machines at the nearest casino.

The truth of the matter is no society, not even our severely secularized technocracy, can ever dispense with mystery and magical ritual.