Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling... race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden ... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can think of many amusing parallels. For example, "the Borough of ... announces: Miss Jones, the splendid principal of our gramm...ar school, has been offered the position of cook and housekeeper by the family next door, and so we feel obliged to dismiss her and make room for one of the young girls just graduated from training college. Miss Jones may not care to be a cook but since she has that privilege we don't think it right for her to continue to teach, valuable as her services are to the community." Or, "the Educational Committee of ... Borough has adopted a rule to employ no more men teachers who have vegetable gardens, and to notify those men now in its employ who possess vegetable gardens or are contemplating acquiring one that they will be dismissed. We are actuated by the following reasons: (1) The place of a man with a vegetable garden is at home working in his garden. (2) We feel, as a general rule, that a man with a vegetable garden will, to some extent, suffer in his efficiency as a teacher. We have no evidence of this; in fact the vegetable gardeners whom we are about to dismiss are among our best teachers, but nevertheless, we feel that as a general policy our rule is sound from an educational standpoint. (3) A man with a garden will not starve. Therefore, it is unfair to continue paying him a salary as a teacher while men who have no vegetable gardens are waiting for posts [ellipses in original].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In matters of usage there are two extremes. At the extreme right are the purists, the standpatters, the rigid traditionalists who ...brook little or no change and who go by the rules--as many rules as they can recall or invent. They may not speak or write brilliantly, but they are grammatically unassailable--except when they forget some rule or misinterpret one.... At the extreme left are the permissivists, the heretics who argue that there is no such thing as "correct" usage. They maintain that usage is what people say, but they neglect to disclose what people they are talking about--most people in general or most intelligent people or most educated people or most writing people or what. Oddly enough, despite the loose approach of the permissivists, who have made some headway in the schools, there is evidence that people do crave authority in matters of language, they do ask for rules and rulings. They do not seem to appreciate the freedom that the permissivists are so eager to bestow upon them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Liberalism is too often misconceived as a new set of dogmas taught by a newer and better set of priests called "liberals." Liberal...ism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas--an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we can determine which is the best grounded is profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives.... Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This good had full as bad a Consequence: The Book thus put in every vulgar hand,... Which each presum'd he best cou'd understand, The Common Rule was made the common Prey; And at the mercy of the Rabble lay. The tender Page with horney Fists was gual'd; And he was gifted most that loudest baul'd: The Spirit gave the Doctoral Degree: And every member of a Company Was of his Trade, and of the Bible free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an ...early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is h...ow to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Golden Rule furnishes the true solution of many difficult problems in government and society. Bishop [Atticus G.] Haygood, an ...ex-slaveholder and an ex-Confederate soldier, has given us the best book on the negro question. The title of his work ... tells the whole story: "Our Brother in Black." When reformers, religious teachers, and statesmen, and the general public lift themselves up to the height of the argument contained in that pithy title, there will no longer be a negro problem, nor a problem of capital and labor, nor any question as to the treatment of the criminal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »