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The Abolition of Man Quotes

20 of the best book quotes from The Abolition of Man
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“For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.”
C. S. Lewis
author
The Abolition of Man
book
influence
humanity
power of one
concepts
02
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“If man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be.”
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“The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.”
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“A wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”
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“The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself.”
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“If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.”
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“Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”
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“Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won.”
09
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“What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”
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“At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational impulses.”
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“The being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same.”
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“Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao . . . or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own ‘natural’ impulses.”
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“For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”
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“I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.”
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“Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consumption, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.”
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“Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.”
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“We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”
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“If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.”
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“It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption.”
20
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“The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.”

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