Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
When politics and home life have become one and the same thing, [...] then,[...] it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the blurring of politics and personal life can lead to chaos or complete freedom.
Leo Tolstoy asserts that when the realms of politics and domestic life merge indistinctly, society finds itself on a precarious edge between total anarchy and absolute liberty. This indicates that such entanglement can destabilize structures, leading to either unchecked freedom devoid of governance or chaotic disorder where individual rights and authority clash.
Themes
PoliticsAnarchyLibertyChaosFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a political debate discussing the implications of government overreach into personal lives.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes βPierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor β such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
Similar quotes
whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
Ayn RandRead
Even nothing cannot last forever.
Neil GaimanRead
We think the way we do partly because Socrates thought the way he did. His basic idea - that the unexamined life is not worth living - is what it means to live in the modern world, to develop ideas and ask questions.
Bettany HughesRead
The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light doesn't illuminate itself. It's always an endless mystery to itself.
Alan WattsRead
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation
Charles DarwinRead
The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.
Noam ChomskyRead