Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist and moral philosopher (1828 to 1910); author of War and Peace and The Kingdom of God Is Within You.
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What they believe
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Almost no human activity except the military consumes as much labour as art
Hundreds of thousands of workmen,—carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers, moulders, type-setters,—spend their whole lives in hard labour to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.
gutenberg.orgSaid c. 1897–1898This on korrents
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Using force to protect one neighbor from another can never be reliably justified
Besides, apologies for violence used against one's neighbor in defense of another neighbor from greater violence are always untrustworthy, because when force is used against one who has not yet carried out his evil intent, I can never know which would be greater—the evil of my act of violence or of the act I want to prevent.
gutenberg.orgSaid c. 1893–1894This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 40 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
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Almost no human activity except the military consumes as much labour as art
Hundreds of thousands of workmen,—carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers, moulders, type-setters,—spend their whole lives in hard labour to satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Beauty, or what pleases us, cannot be the basis for defining art
And in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense serve as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art should be.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
No exact definition of art exists because it has been based on beauty
Therefore, however strange it may seem to say so, in spite of the mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art has been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
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Art is one person consciously passing on lived feelings that infect others
Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
A society's shared religious sense decides the value of the feelings its art transmits
In every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is bad, and it is this religious conception that decides the value of the feelings transmitted by art.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
If art is essential for everyone it should be accessible to everyone
But if art is an important matter, a spiritual blessing, essential for all men (“like religion,” as the devotees of art are fond of saying), then it should be accessible to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to all men, then one of two things: either art is not the vital matter it is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not the real thing.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Almost all upper-class feelings amount to pride, sexual desire and weariness of life
We think the feelings experienced by people of our day and our class are very important and varied; but in reality almost all the feelings of people of our class amount to but three very insignificant and simple feelings—the feeling of pride, the feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of life.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Art infects only when the author has himself experienced the feeling he transmits
But an artistic impression, i.e. infection, is only received when an author has, in the manner peculiar to himself, experienced the feeling which he transmits, and not when he passes on another man’s feeling previously transmitted to him.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Professionalism is the first condition for the spread of counterfeit art
Professionalism is the first condition of the diffusion of false, counterfeit art.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Interpreting art in words shows the interpreter cannot feel its infection
The interpretation of works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter is himself incapable of feeling the infection of art.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
No school can create feeling or teach a person to express it in their own way
No school can evoke feeling in a man, and still less can it teach him how to manifest it in the one particular manner natural to him alone.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
The Wagner production he attended is a spurious counterfeit of art that perverts upper-class taste
And thus, thanks to the masterly skill with which it counterfeits art while having nothing in common with it, a meaningless, coarse, spurious production finds acceptance all over the world, costs millions of roubles to produce, and assists more and more to pervert the taste of people of the upper classes and their conception of what is art.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Almost everything our society considers art is only a counterfeit of art
This investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost all that our society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far from being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all, but only a counterfeit of it.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
The degree of infectiousness is the only measure of excellence in art
And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Sincerity, an inner need to express one's feeling, sums up what makes art contagious
I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may all be summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e. that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is not a good work of art
And this criterion, coinciding with the indications of plain and sane sense, indubitably shows me that that symphony by Beethoven is not a good work of art.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Children giving concerts at ten are as pitiful as child acrobats
It is often said that it is horrible and pitiful to see little acrobats putting their legs over their necks, but it is not less pitiful to see children of 10 giving concerts, and it is still worse to see schoolboys of 10 who, as a preparation for literary work, have learnt by heart the exceptions to the Latin grammar.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Security and luxury are the conditions most injurious to an artist's productiveness
There is no position more injurious to an artist’s productiveness than that position of complete security and luxury in which artists usually live in our society.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Art's task is to make brotherhood and love of neighbour everyone's customary feeling
The task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood and love of one’s neighbour, now attained only by the best members of the society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Nearly all his own fiction belongs to bad art, except two stories
I must, moreover, mention that I consign my own artistic productions to the category of bad art, excepting the story God sees the Truth, which seeks a place in the first class, and The Prisoner of the Caucasus, which belongs to the second.
What Is Art? (1897-1898; Aylmer Maude translation) Said c. 1897–1898
Using force to protect one neighbor from another can never be reliably justified
Besides, apologies for violence used against one's neighbor in defense of another neighbor from greater violence are always untrustworthy, because when force is used against one who has not yet carried out his evil intent, I can never know which would be greater—the evil of my act of violence or of the act I want to prevent.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Non-resistance to evil by force is what every despotism fears most
It is worthy of remark in this connection that the revolutionists have attacked the principle of non-resistance to evil by force, in spite of the fact that it is the greatest terror and danger for every despotism.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
The churches as institutions are directly opposed to Christ's teaching
Strange as it may seem, the churches as churches have always been, and cannot but be, institutions not only alien in spirit to Christ's teaching, but even directly antagonistic to it.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Rejecting or softening Christ's command of non-resistance means misunderstanding his teaching
To advocate the rejection of Christ's command of non-resistance to evil, or its adaptation to the needs of life, implies a misunderstanding of the teaching of Christ.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
There is nothing mysterious, mystic, or supernatural about Christian doctrine
In precisely the same way the Christian doctrine is presented to men of the social or heathen theory of life to-day, in the guise of a supernatural religion, though there is in reality nothing mysterious, mystic, or supernatural about it.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Equality, common property and non-resistance will come to seem as natural as family life
The time will come—it is already coming—when the Christian principles of equality and fraternity, community of property, non-resistance of evil by force, will appear just as natural and simple as the principles of family or social life seem to us now.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Asking governments to give up violence is asking them to abolish themselves
To suggest to governments that they should not have recourse to violence, but should decide their misunderstandings in accordance with equity, is inviting them to abolish themselves as rulers, and that no government can ever consent to do.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Government may suppress private violence but always brings growing violence of its own
Government authority, even if it does suppress private violence, always introduces into the life of men fresh forms of violence, which tend to become greater and greater in proportion to the duration and strength of the government.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Armies exist above all to defend governments from their own oppressed subjects
It is generally supposed that governments strengthen their forces only to defend the state from other states, in oblivion of the fact that armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Universal military service destroys the benefits of the social order it is meant to maintain
Universal military service may be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it impossible to live in it. In the same way universal military service destroys all the benefits of the social order of life which it is employed to maintain.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Most people submit to military service through a kind of hypnosis, not sober calculation
If the majority of men choose to submit rather than to refuse, it is not the result of sober balancing of advantages and disadvantages, but because they are induced by a kind of hypnotizing process practiced upon them.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Christianity is a higher conception of life that can only be freely accepted, never imposed
Christianity is a new and higher conception of life. A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Universal armament is flagrantly inconsistent with the Christian ideas of the modern world
Indeed, it is only because this state of universal armament has been brought about gradually and imperceptibly, and because governments have exerted, in maintaining it, every resource of intimidation, corruption, brutalization, and violence, that we do not see its flagrant inconsistency with the Christian ideas and sentiments by which the modern world is permeated.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
National festivals and monuments are used to breed antagonism and hatred for other nations
The patriotic superstition is encouraged by the creation, with money taken from the people, of national fêtes, spectacles, monuments, and festivals to dispose men to attach importance to their own nation, and to the aggrandizement of the state and its rulers, and to feel antagonism and even hatred for other nations.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
True Christianity is incompatible with government and its violence, executions and wars
But no honest and serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility of true Christianity—the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and love—with government, with its pomp, acts of violence, executions, and wars.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Social order rests on public opinion, and using force weakens what it tries to maintain
The existing order is maintained, not by force, but by public opinion, the action of which is disturbed by the use of force. So that the effect of using force is to disturb and to weaken the very thing it tries to maintain.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
When the kingdom of God comes depends on people themselves alone
Men cannot know when the day and the hour of the kingdom of God will come, because its coming depends on themselves alone.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
All the advantages of the rich over the poor rest on flogging, imprisonment and murder
But one need only recall the facts of history, not the history of the exploits of different dynasties of rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the majority by a small number of men, to see that all the advantages the rich have over the poor are based on nothing but flogging, imprisonment, and murder.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
Hypocrisy corrupts people more than theft, robbery, murder or fornication
It is not theft nor robbery nor murder nor fornication, but falsehood, the special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the true meaning of all real human life, and debars them from all progress toward perfection.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
No one can be forced against their will into acting against their conscience
A man cannot be placed against his will in a situation opposed to his conscience.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894; Constance Garnett translation) Said c. 1893–1894
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