Herbert Read Quotes

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.

For traditional societies … the collective, the group, is more important than the individual, and empowering the individual is equated with dividing the society.

God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.

Cultures are never merely intellectual constructs. They take form through the collective intelligence and memory, through a commonly held psychology and emotions, through spiritual and artistic communion.

Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs.

On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of living together among men.

Absent a national church, Christianity has frequently provided an invisible mortar for our culture and a common vocabulary for our great debates.

In South Africa, we kind of like looking for things that unite people in big, big groups.

Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.

In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic.

After eight years as your president, I still believe that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

Americans divide most sharply over what brings them together.

When I travel the country, I am often struck by how much we actually have in common. It's much more powerful than how much there is that's reported that divides us.

We are a pluralistic Nation composed of very distinct groups, each bound together by ethnicity, race, or religion - each group proud of its identity and committed to its faith and traditions. Yet despite these differences, we can be bound together into a broader community.

When I grew up, there was a monoculture. Everybody listened to the same music on the radio. I miss monoculture. I think it's good for people to have a shared experience.

We're so bitterly divided these days, the appearance of a true 'other' might be the best chance of bringing us all together.

I'm focusing on the issues that bring people together and build broad majorities.

There are many similarities between Sai Baba and me. He believed there is only one God, and so do I. He loved Sufi music; so do I.

When your goal is to bring together the country in a substantive way to say that we're united by values and more - that are - you know, stronger than the things that divide us. That could be a moment.

Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

I think of art as a glue, a cultural and social glue. It's one of the means that has served to show us the things we believe in and the things we celebrate; it has served to reinforce our relationship to each other.

Indian culture is essentially much more of a we culture. It's a communal culture where you do what's best for the community - you procreate.

History teaches that a race of people is best preserved where the greater number hold one common spirit in consequence of the similarity of their accustomed and indisputable principles.