We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has ...bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blake and Goethe were individualists par excellence, uncompromisingly protective of their single vision. In both Faust Part II and... The Four Zoas, emphasis on the universality of the poet's message contrasts with the resistant texture of a compressed style and the striking complexity of the mythological machinery. Blake likes to emphasize that he is not writing for the simple-minded; Goethe takes a teasing pleasure in keeping philologists busy. Faust and The Four Zoas are dramatic epics of Humanity, but embodied in a mythic language whose uniqueness and quirkiness are jealously guarded. Blake never published The Four Zoas, though it culminates his early prophecies and provides the indispensable key to the later ones. And Goethe refused to allow Faust Part II to be printed in its entirety until after his death. Both poets postponed the public's discovery of their central works; secrecy was enforced as long as it could be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science... is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My one pupil has begun his work with me, and I will give you a description how the lecture is conducted. It is the most important ...point, you know, that the tutor should be dignified and at a distance from the pupil, and that the pupil should be as much as possible degraded.... So I sit at the further end of the room; outside the door (which is shut) sits the scout; outside the outer door (also shut) sits the sub-scout: half-way downstairs sits the sub- sub-scout: and down in the yard sits the pupil. The questions are shouted from one to the other, and the answers come back in the same way--it is rather confusing till you are well used to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of thin...gs today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic, and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himse...lf with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, "Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give up the belief that mind is, even temporarily, compressed within the skull, and you will quickly become more manly or womanly.... You will understand yourself and your Maker better than before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cry cry what shall I cry? The first thing to do is to form the committees:... The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees. One secretary will do for several committees.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »