Antoninus

“There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. Umberto Eco, ‘Ur-Fascism”
― Richard Seymour, The Twittering Machine

“It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares". Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point our finger at any of its new instances - every day, in every part of the world.”
― Umberto Eco, Il fascismo eterno

“You think that I am naive, but it is you who are naive. You have no idea what is happening inside of you when you look at a painting. You think that you are getting close to art voluntarily, enticed by its beauty, that this intimacy is taking place in an atmosphere of freedom and that delight is being born in you spontaneously, lured by the divine rod of Beauty. In truth, a hand has grabbed you by the scruff of the neck, led you to this painting and has thrown you to your knees. A will mightier than your own told you to attempt to experience the appropriate emotions. Whose hand and whose will? That hand is not the hand of a single man, the will is collective, born in an interhuman dimension, quite alien to you. So you do not admire at all, you merely try to admire.”
― Witold Gombrowicz , Diary

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
― W. I. Thomas