Herman Hesse on Careers and Freedom

An extract from The Glass Bead Game

Hermann Hesse

From Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game (via Wikiquote):

Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Arvo Pärt on Tintinnabulation
• Friedrich Nietzsche on Dangerous Books
• Franz Kafka: 'A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us'
• Franz Kafka on Marcus Aurelius
• Ludwig Wittgenstein on Science and Industry