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Quote by David Burr Gerrard

“Subtle! Subtlety is bourgeois. Brecht us that when he popped drama’s cherry. He fucked drama until it stopped being subtle, like a lady, and started being useful, like a whore.”

Quote by David Burr Gerrard

Book:Short Century
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Short Century

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David Burr Gerrard

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“I take it that the intent of science is to ease human existence. If you give way to coercion, science can be crippled, and your new machines may simply suggest new drudgeries. Should you, then, in time, discover all there is to be discovered, your progress must become a progress away from the bulk of humanity. The gulf might even grow so wide that the sound of your cheering at some new achievement would be echoed by a universal howl of horror.”

SciencePurposeProgressDiscoveryLimitBrecht
Book:Galileo
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“When the Regime commanded the unlawful books to be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires. Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged: he'd been excluded! He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath, to write fierce letters to the morons in power — Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen — Haven't I always reported the truth? Now here you are, treating me like a liar! Burn me!”

CensorshipBook BurningBrecht
Author:Bertolt Brecht
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“Every civil war builds on illusions and fear Even war between individuals; whatever bonds may exist between them To recapitulate images from history: After the first world war, exhaustion, victory, inability to build a new order, growing dissolution, chaos Revanchism Economic depression Then the waiting for Germany, the generalized war initiated by Germany This dread waiting, 1938, 1939 When I was conceived After the cold war another period of exhaustion, another victory Perhaps we are in the presence of generalized civil war, internal division, hatred Should we prefer the empire? As Dante did? Or Ezra Pound, Heidegger Or for that matter Brecht? We love dissolution and chaos passionately, I hear a voice say, I know whose It is not here that I shall say it It is not easy There are no nations Pillars of fire precede the returning, in human terms, lost son.”

FearHistoryChaosCivil WarIllusionsDanteHeideggerBrechtWorld WarEzra Pound
Book:Mozart's Third Brain
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“No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. Collective thought is stupid because it's collective. Nothing passes into the realm of the collective without leaving at the border--like a toll--most of the intelligence it contained. In youth we're twofold. Our innate intelligence, which may be considerable, coexists with the stupidity of our inexperience, which forms a second, lesser intelligence. Only later on do the two unite. That's why youth always blunders - not because of its inexperience, but because of its non-unity. Today the only course left for the man of superior intelligence is abdication.”

YouthIntelligenceStupidityInexperienceAbdicationCollective Thought
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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