Wednesday 14 June 2023

Quotations

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“Please be aware that this book was published in the 1920s and may contain language, themes, or characterisations which you may find outdated.” 
Penguin Books will publish this warning with all P.G. Wodehouse books. 

"The minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz." 
Andre Maurois

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd". 
Bertrand Russell. This was the attitude of Remainers to Brexiteers from 2016 to 2021. Now that the British economy is doing slightly better than the eurozone the ferocity might be abating.

“I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.” 
Cormac McCarthy, who has just died. I know nothing of him except he was an American novelist. He sounds like a wise man.

'Those that I fight I do not hate;
Those that I guard I do not love.'
WB Yeats

"Opponents and supporters alike should recognize that Trump is a strong candidate because our institutions have forfeited the public’s trust. Both parties, the media, the federal government (especially the intelligence agencies) and academia are vulnerable to a candidate like Trump not only because of his prowess but also because of their own depleted legitimacy. He’s their comeuppance."
Dan McCarthy in the NYT on Monday



5 comments:

  1. You would really enjoy Cormac McCarthy. He was a great writer in the style of Faulkner and Hemingway. But very wise views on a variety of topics.

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  2. This does NOT happen in every generation - a new generation may reject (or accept) the ideas found in old books, but it did not (till now) demand that the books themselves be changed as the ideas in the old books are too dangerous to be read. Vile Frankfurt School "Woke" Marxism now dominates every institution (public and private), including publishing houses.

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    1. Maurois wrote that in The Silence of Colonel Bramble just after the First World War.

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    2. There was a massive change between before and after the First World War - in everything from how women dressed to philosophy. A cynical "debunking" attitude took hold.- whereas before the war the believe that physical and moral improvement was taking place was almost universal. Even the fantasy ideas of Tolkien changed - before the war his elves were going to be examples of moral conduct for humans to learn from, after the First World War his elves became players in a tragedy of suffering which led to them leaving this Middle Earth.

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  3. Lives are intelligible; ideas need translation even between schools alive at the same time.

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