Home > Topic > the pronouncements
1 " The view that the truth is one and undivided, and the same for all men everywhere at all times, whether one finds it in the pronouncements of sacred books, traditional wisdom, the authority of churches, democratic majorities, observation and experiment conducted by qualified experts, or the convictions of simple folks uncorrupted by civilisation---this view, in one form or another, is central to western thought, which stems from Plato and his disciples. "
― Isaiah Berlin , The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
2 " For after all, why do we go on fighting? If we die for democracy then we must be one of the democracies. Let the rest fight with us, if that is the case. But the most powerful of them, the only one that could save us, chooses to bide its time. Very good. That is its right. But by so doing, that democracy signifies that we are fighting for ourselves alone. And we go on fighting despite the assurance that we have lost the war. Why, then, do we go on dying? Out of despair? But there is no despair. You know nothing about defeat if you think there is room in it for despair.There is a verity that is higher than the pronouncements of the intelligence. There is a thing which pierces and governs us and which cannot be grasped by the intelligence. A tree has no language. We are a tree. There are truths which are evident, though not to be put into words. I do not die in order to obstruct the path of the invasion, for there is no shelter upon which I can fall back with those I love. I do not die to preserve my honor, since I deny that my honor is at stake, and I challenge the jurisdiction of my judge. Nor do I die out of desperation. "
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , Flight to Arras
3 " So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what " good" or " bad" language is, and the issue of language change needn't come into question here. But no coherent criterion has ever been given: upon examination, the pronouncements of the self-appointed pundits are always a mix of cultural biases, half-understandings of languages, and an obvious compulsion for telling people what to do. "
4 " That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish. "
