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“I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand.”
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“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.”
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“I believe in intelligence, and I believe also that there are inherited differences in intellectual ability, but I do not believe that intelligence is a simple scalar endowment that can be quanitified by attaching a single figure to it—an I.Q. or the like.”
Source : Peter Brian Medawar (1981). “Advice to a young scientist”
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“The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.”
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“A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.”
Source : John Drinkwater (1922). “The Lyric: An Essay”, p.18, Library of Alexandria
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“Revolt, it will be said, implies violence; but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence.”
Source : Sir Herbert Edward Read, Herbert Read (1994). “A One-man Manifesto and Other Writings for Freedom Press”, Freedom Press (CA)
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“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.”
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“We must walk united with our differences: there is no other way to become one. This is the way of Jesus.”
