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141 " It isn’t the man who wants to who continues the tradition, it’s the man who can, and sometimes he’s the man who knows least about it. "
― Clive James , Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
142 " A fanatic redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. "
143 " In the course of the last forty years, the only part of the world that has enjoyed peace is the continent divided between two zones of political civilization both of them armed with atomic bombs. —RAYMOND ARON, LES DERNIÈRES ANNÉES DU SIÈCLE (THE LAST YEARS OF THE CENTURY), P. 68 "
144 " His advocacy and understanding of Victor Hugo led to a close friendship, "
145 " although his love affair with Madame Hugo was not calculated to reinforce it. "
146 " Accusing your own mother of adultery to save your skin is creativity of a kind so special it can almost be called a talent. "
147 " Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution will always be attractive to the kind of romantic who believes that he is being oppressed by global capitalism when he maxes out his credit card. "
148 " Cocteau thought of his own images. He really was as innovative as his admirers said. Their only mistake was to imagine that novelty was an ethos. "
149 " Liberals and humanists are always saying that art is the soul of truth. "
150 " Isn’t a form of teaching that avoids all prescription really a form of therapy? "
151 " The eternal, not the modern, is what I love: the modern will be antiquated and grotesque in ten years, when the fashion passes. —MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO "
152 " But they are quite often ignoring the truth while they say so. "
153 " To save Germany was not granted to them; only to die for it; luck was not with them, it was with Hitler. But they did not die in vain. Just as we need air if we are to breathe, and light if we are to see, so we need noble people if we are to live. —RICARDA HUCH, "
154 " But the time has already arrived when such a joke does not register as funny. What have we gained, except a classroom in which no one need feel excluded? "
155 " It was being published, even after his death, that brought Franz Kafka alive: otherwise he would have been just a man who got nowhere with women. "
156 " But peace is not a principle: merely a desirable state of affairs. "
157 " the American-affiliated students were incomparably better informed than the locals—incomparably more intelligent all round, to put it bluntly—but the one thing the Americans could not do to save their lives was recite the verse in front of them. "
158 " The only answer to Hitler was a contrary violence. "
159 " The Germans have a word for it: Todgeschweigen. Killed by not being mentioned. "
160 " Dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight. —SIR THOMAS BROWNE, "