Our noses too, and our eyes and ears, are political instruments, protesters. An aesthetic response is a political action.… We know instinctively, aesthetically, when a fish stinks, when the sense of beauty is offended. Standing for these moments—and these moments occur each day, within every airless office building, seated in each crippling chair, inundated by senseless noise and fattened on industrial food—standing for our responses, these aesthetic reverberations of truth in the soul, may be the primary civic act of the citizen, the origin of caution and of the precautionary principle itself, with its warnings to stop, look, and listen.

About James Hillman

James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home...

More quotations from James Hillman

Do you really believe that humans invented the wheel out of their big brains alone, or fire, or baskets, or tools? Stones rolled downhill; bolts of fire shot from the sky and out of the earth; birds wove and probed and pounded, as did apes and elephants. The sciences that master nature were taught by nature how it could be mastered.

—James Hillman

There have been 5, 600 years of written history and 14, 600 wars have been recorded.

—James Hillman

For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.

—James Hillman

love imagination imagination relationship boredom sentiment duty staleness

It's better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all.

—James Hillman

action world better

More quotations tagged with “caution”

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

—Joseph Addison

hope success experience caution perseverance

I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

—Ray Bradbury

future caution prevention

That is the greatest fallacy, the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

—Ernest Hemingway

wisdom age caution care

I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go.

—Shauna Niequist in Bittersweet

life fear friendship relationships caution leaving

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

—Casey Stengel

future error caution predictions

History

23 Nov 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Our noses too, and our eyes and ears, are political instruments, protesters. An aesthetic response is a political action. . . . We know instinctively, aesthetically, when a fish stinks, when the sense of beauty is offended. Standing for these moments — and these moments occur each day, within every airless office building, seated in each crippling chair, inundated by senseless noise and fattened on industrial food — standing for our responses, these aesthetic reverberations of truth in the soul, may be the primary civic act of the citizen, the origin of caution and of the precautionary principle itself, with its warnings to stop, look, and listen.