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Quote by Leszek Kołakowski

“No one can be certain whether our civilization will be able to cope with the ecological, demographic, and spiritual dangers it has caused or whether it will fall victim to catastrophe. So we cannot tell whether the present 'anti-capitalist', 'anti-globalist', and related obscurantist movements and ideas will quietly fade away and one day come to seem as pathetic as the legendary Luddites at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or whether they will maintain their strength and fortify their trenches.”

Quote by Leszek Kołakowski

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Leszek Kołakowski

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“The Luddites were also excellent trolls. They were, like the movement that was massacred at Peterloo a few years later, a prototypical class insurrection: but they carried it off with tremendous elan. The very name ‘Luddite’ deliberately evoked a fictitious leader, Ned Ludd, a product of legend and fantasy, fear of whom had British authorities and spies searching high and low for sign of him. His supporters decided that Mr Ludd lived in Sherwood Forest, home of the equally legendary Robin Hood, and signed their letters, ‘Ned Ludd’s Office, Sherwood Forest’. They cross-dressed and marched as ‘General Ludd’s wives’.”

“What happened to the classics?" you may ask. "Don't you believe in reading great literature to children?" Nothing happened to the classics-but something happened to children: their imaginations went to sleep in front of the television set twenty-five years ago. Reading a classic to a child whose imagination is in a state of retarded development will not foster a love of literature in that child.”