mellowdream
Joined 9 years ago
Joined 9 years ago
"Because people always read only the latest, instead of the best of all times, writers stay within a narrow circle of circulating ideas, and the age silts up ever more deeply in its own muck.
Therefore with respect to our reading the art of not reading is extremely important. It consists in our not picking up whatever happens to be occupying the greater public at any given time, such as for instance political or literary pamphlets, novels, poems and so on, which currently make a lot of noise and even reach several editions in the first and last years of their run. On the contrary, we should consider that whoever writes for fools always finds a large public, and we should devote the always precious and carefully measured time set aside for reading exclusively to the works of the great minds of all times and peoples, who tower over the rest of humanity, and who are distinguished as such by the voice of fame. Only they really shape and instruct us.
Of the inferior we can never read too little and the good never too often. Bad books are intellectual poison: they ruin the mind.
In order to read the good it is a condition that we do not read the bad; for life is short, and our time and our powers are limited."
It's nice that this sort of due diligence and review is even possible with public institutions.
It so happens that this pattern is economically inefficient, and only in our inability to support it does its discontinuation serve as a negative economic indicator. American culture makes it an effective metric in the U.S. Where it's already common for children to live with their parents longer though, such as in India, the original choice could very likely be to stay, which makes the metric less useful.
"Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer
"Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw
"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has." Mark Twain
"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Napoleon
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm X
"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands." Oscar Wilde
"The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word journalist." Soren Kierkegaard
"Whenever I thought of you I couldn't help thinking of a particular incident which seemed to me very important. . . . you made a remark about 'national character' that shocked me by its primitiveness. I then thought: what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any . . . journalist in the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends." - Wittgenstein
"The newspaper epitomises the goal of today’s educational system, just as the journalist, servant of the present moment, has taken the place of the genius, our salvation from the moment and leader for the ages." - Nietzsche
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