Pillsonista

“No fixed idea except to avoid fixed ideas.”
― Robert Musil

“Readers my age were made to memorize and recite: their yawns of boredom were discounted. Younger readers have been spared such indignities. Who was lucky? Isn't a form of teaching that avoids all prescription really a form of therapy? In a course called Classical Studies taught by teachers who possess scarcely a word of Latin or Greek, suffering is avoided, but isn't it true that nothing is gained except the absence of suffering?... What have we gained, except a classroom in which no one need feel excluded?”
― Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“If we aren't capable of seeing that the benefit of justice means nothing unless it is extended to those who are too stupid to be worthy of it, we should join the other side.”
― Clive James, The Meaning of Recognition

“Learned books are published by the thousand, yet learning was never less trusted as something to be pursued for its own sake. Too often used for ill, it is now asked about its use for good, and usually on the assumption that any goodwill be measurable on a market, like a commodity.”
― Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts