Michael Rettig

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Michael.


The Fisherman
Michael Rettig is currently reading
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
Wind and Truth
Michael Rettig is currently reading
by Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads Author)
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating


 
See all 7 books that Michael is reading…
Book cover for Small Things Like These
Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for ...more
Loading...
Timothy Snyder
“10 Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Roger Scruton
“We should reject the view that high culture, as the possession of an elite, is of no use to those who don’t possess it. This is as false as the view that science or higher mathematics are useless to those who don’t understand them. Scientific knowledge exists because a few talented people are prepared to devote their energy to pursuing it. That is what a university is for: and since you cannot pass on difficult knowledge without discriminating between the students who can absorb it and those who cannot, discrimination is a social good. The same is true of high culture. Those able to acquire it will be a minority and the process of cultural transmission will be critically impeded if that teacher must teach Mozart and Lady Gaga side by side to satisfy some egalitarian agenda.”
Roger Scruton

Salman Rushdie
“How does one live amongst one’s fellow countrymen and countrywomen when you don’t know which of them is numbered amongst the sixty-million-plus who brought the horror to power, when you can’t tell who should be counted among the ninety-million-plus who shrugged and stayed home, or when your fellow Americans tell you that knowing things is elitist and they hate elites, and all you have ever had is your mind and you were brought up to believe in the loveliness of knowledge, not that knowledge-is-power nonsense, but knowledge is beauty, and then all of that, education, art, music, film, becomes a reason for being loathed…”
Salman Rushdie, The Golden House

Roger Scruton
“Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this ‘living down’, which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness.”
Roger Scruton, Face of God: The Gifford Lectures

Roger Scruton
“Pop pollution has an effect on musical appreciation comparable to pornography on sex. All that is beautiful, special and full of love is replaced by a grinding mechanism. Just as porn addicts lose the capacity for real sexual love, so do pop addicts lose the capacity for genuine musical experience.”
Roger Scruton

220 Goodreads Librarians Group — 309477 members — last activity 4 minutes ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
122453 The Fyodor Dostoyevsky Group — 651 members — last activity Aug 20, 2024 03:59PM
We are dedicated to discussing books by one of the greatest Russian writers ever. But 2014 will be focused on conducting a joint reading of 'The Broth ...more
year in books
Asdeghik
6,676 books | 1,480 friends

J.L.   ...
2,095 books | 4,702 friends

Khatchi...
118 books | 581 friends

Carolyn...
1,720 books | 113 friends

Linnette
705 books | 11 friends

Matt Ha...
134 books | 29 friends

Dennis ...
1 book | 143 friends

Amy Gav...
165 books | 116 friends

More friends…



Polls voted on by Michael

Lists liked by Michael