He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if... he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To suppose that "I know" is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so common in philosophy. Even if... some language is now purely descriptive, language was not in origin so, and much of it is still not so. utterance of obvious ritual phrases, in the appropriate circumstances, is not describing the action we are doing, but doing it ("I do"): in other cases it functions, like tone and expression, or again like punctuation and mood, as an intimation that we are employing language in a special way ("I warn," "I ask," "I define"). Such phrases cannot, strictly, be lies, though they can "imply" lies, as "I promise" implies that I fully intend, which may be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In... the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Coleridge observes that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists. The latter feel that classes, orders, and genres are realiti...es; the former, that they are generalizations. For the latter, language is nothing but an approximative set of symbols; for the former, it is the map of the universe. The Platonist knows that the universe is somehow a cosmos, an order; that order, for the Aristotelian, can be an error or a fiction of our partial knowledge. Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal antagonists change their name and language: one is Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley; the other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
OUR Latin books in motly row, Invite us to our task--... Gay Horace, stately Cicero: Yet there's one verb, when once we know, No higher skill we ask: This ranks all other lore above-- We've learned "'Amare' means 'to love'!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into th...e, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Others built beautifully and well, but fell... to lie like a bleached hull; other sea-cities have faltered and striven with the tide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cann...ot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Two well-assorted travellers use The highway, Eros and the muse.... From the twins is nothing hidden, To the pair is naught forbidden; Hand in hand the comrades go Every nook of nature through: Each for the other they were born, Each can other best adorn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because of the enormous size of the public, television advertisers face problems of a different nature to advertisers in the press... or even on posters. The readers of even the most widely circulated newspapers represent only a relatively small section of the population, and quite a number of facts have been accumulated about the interests, prejudices and habits of the readers of different papers; posters are placed in definite localities and the population of that locality, in contrast to other localities in that area, and of the different regions of England can, if necessary, be estimated. But with television, all these sensational calculations disappear; the advertiser is reaching practically the whole population within range of the transmitter. He may well ignore the poorest people, because they are not likely to have a set, and the richest and best educated because (as Dorothy Sayers shrewdly pointed out) they "buy what they want when they want it" and are not likely to be influenced by mass advertisements; but between those two extremes he has to try to please and portray Everyman and Everywoman and, above all, must try to offend none of them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »