To try to reform all the ...

To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.
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 Michael Polanyi

Quotes from the same author

Of course language manifests a belief only if we use its words with the implied acceptance of their appositeness.
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 Michael Polanyi
We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.
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 Michael Polanyi
Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence.
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 Michael Polanyi
And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.
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 Michael Polanyi
A free society is regarded as one that does not engage, on principle, in attempting to control what people find meaningful, and a totalitarian society is regarded as one that does, on principle, attempt such control.
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 Michael Polanyi