- History admires immorality, and as a result, so do we — almost every great leader was a mass murderer. We only started calling ‘great’ men ‘evil’ in the 20th century, when industrialization made the scale of slaughter too immense to ignore.
- The value of a book or work of art isn’t predicated on who made it; in life you have to choose, you have to radically reduce what goes into your brain — because there’s a crippling amount of information trying to push in. The argument against the classics is very much a part of our consumerist culture: it just appeals to a notion of social justice to make it seem like something other than it us — which is a dumbing down of culture to the point where people think kitsch is worth spending $ on.
- The spirit which wills itself is free.
- If you tell me that Shakespeare was just the popular entertainment of his day, then my response is that popular entertainment was better in 1599.
5. What most of us do not realize is that we were crippled by the school system growing up: we have become over-obedient, under-educated adults. In short, we do not realize that we were over-schooled.
6. Time acts as a filter: the further back you go in time, the easier it is to locate the classic.
