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.
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All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life...It is read more
Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life...It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene they could never have dared to be great.
Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are read more
Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Every man's ability may be strengthened or increased by culture.
Every man's ability may be strengthened or increased by culture.
There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that read more
Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that a special warning strip of land around the edge of a baseball field lets a player know that he is about to run into a concrete wall when he is preoccupied with catching the ball. The wider that strip of land and the more sensitive the player is to the changing composition of the ground under his feet as he pursues the ball, the more effective the warning. Romanticizing or lionizing as "individualistic" those people who disregard social cues and inducements increases the danger of head-on collisions with inherent social limits. Decrying various forms of social disapproval is in effect narrowing the warning strip.
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely read more
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
