If we have nothing to do but service our own pleasure - because society has taught us that's all we're worth and we're exiled from positions of authority from which we could actually shape society - then we just become hedonists. Eventually, despite how great it may look on Saturday night, come Monday morning there's just purposelessness.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Society teaching people to focus only on pleasure and excluding them from power leads to hedonism and eventual purposelessness.
- In plain terms
- Chasing only pleasure without power leads to emptiness.
- What can you take from it?
- Seek purpose beyond personal pleasure to avoid emptiness.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Do you feel purposeful in your current life?
- What gives your life meaning beyond pleasure?
Another view
It assumes lack of authority is the sole cause of purposelessness.
More from Clive Barker
Flesh is our indisputable commonality. Whatever our race, our religion, our politics we are faced every morning with the fact of our bodies. Their frailties, t…
Permalink to quote #3 I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Give…
Permalink to quote #5 Every body is a book of blood; Wherever we're opened, we're red.
Permalink to quote #2
Related quotes
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
George WashingtonGeorge Washington quote #1 ...no bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there …
Leo StraussLeo Strauss quote #1 But Hitler didn't strive for the annihilation of the Jews - he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning tha…
Franz von PapenFranz von Papen quote #1