This site contains the thoughts and maxims of Michael Curran on art, psychology, self-interest, pride, vices and virtues, thinking, illusions and imitation, and the purpose of life.
Here is a sample:
On Art Taste Style
If art could change the way we see the world, it would make artists of us all.
Create your work in hope, but judge it in despair.
Where there are no strong rules, there will be no sweet exceptions.
Beauty is a complex equation which the senses solve in the blink of an eye.
Style is pose not personality.
On Self-knowledge Psychology
The sole thing that some people have to teach you is what they don’t know about themselves.
Malice sees the parts, love sees the whole.
Paradise would still be hell, if you had to leave your memories on earth, or if you had to cart them with you.
On Religion
Mortals can’t touch a god without reducing it to an idol.
A faith is a sacred Ponzi scheme, which rests on the mutual credulity of its dupes.
The world takes its revenge on God by setting up religions.
On Happiness Self-interest
Just when you trust that you have tamed life, it bares its fangs, and snarls, and shows you once more that it is a wolf and not a fawning cur.
A lifestyle is not meant to be enjoyed but envied.
We use our godlike knowledge to guide us to our low and delusive goals.
On Pride Vanity Praise Shame
Enthusiasm is the virtue of salesmen.
Some people’s pride is good for nothing but to find the best way to make fools of them.
A society that has all the money it needs in order to do what it likes will find nothing better to do than to make more money.
On Vices Virtues Pity Conscience
If the meek inherit the earth, they won’t stay meek for long. Or if they do, they won’t keep the earth for long.
Pity is condescension with a good conscience.
We don’t waste our pity on our enemies. We save that subtle poison to serve up to our friends.
Most people see more and care less than they let on.
Owning up to your weak points may be the first step on the way to correcting them. But it may just as well be the last excuse for not doing so.
On Politics The end
Nationalism is a cancerous growth of decrepit nations in their second childishness. It is the frenzy of adolescent minds in a senile polity.
We are wrecking the earth because we can. And we won’t stop because we can’t.
Progress has so addled our brains, that we look back on the havoc it has caused as one of the mistakes of the past which progress will soon put right.
Progress will make the future the best of all times not to be alive in.
On Thinking Cynics Genius
Some people will go to great lengths to seem original, short of thinking for themselves.
Our need to believe is a pale shadow of our real and deep need to belong.
It is by converting others that we convince ourselves.
You ought to think as urgently as if you were to die today, and as patiently as if you were sure to live for all time.
A straight line sees least of the world.
It takes a long time to see the complexity of things. It takes a lot longer to see their simplicity.
Contempt whets the intellect, admiration dilates the imagination.
What small differences make all the difference to us.
On Illusion Imitation Kitsch
Truth is the nuclear deterrent which keeps the truce between friends, since we know that no one will dare to use it.
A self-believer is bound to be a self-deceiver.
Kitsch is the style of suburban happiness.
On Purpose Value Death
Evil is banal because it is so natural. And good is banal because it is so conventional.
Our life depends on having something to do as if our life depended on it.
The ecstasy of living distracts us from the emptiness of life.
We are never in the moment, least of all when that moment is our last.
We die trying to put off death, as we lived trying to put off life.
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