Ivor A. Richards Quotes & Sayings

Poetry is capable of saving us. — Ivor A. Richards

The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states. — Ivor A. Richards

This essay is intended to serve as a reminder that immense and threatening divisions in mankind can spring from differences between virtues as well as from envies and greeds. When the virtues on each part are largely inapprehensible by the other, the danger is heightened by Man's natural fear of what he does not understand, and his inclination to suppose it not worth understanding. To attack it easier than to study. There are also, in this case of China and the West, intense and complex cultural vanities on both sides to be taken into account: vanities largely inexplicable the one to the other... — Ivor A. Richards

A book is a machine to think with. — Ivor A. Richards

A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive. — Ivor A. Richards

An experience has to be formed, no doubt, before it is communicated, but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to be communicated. — Ivor A. Richards