Quotes from Herbert Read

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.

The farther a society progresses, the more clearly the individual becomes the antithesis of the group.

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.

The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality.

Great changes in the destiny of mankind can be effected only in the minds of little children.

Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.