Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Steven Magee

Quote by Steven Magee

Author

Steven Magee

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Steven Magee. more

You May Also Like

“They have not the slightest awareness of how restricted their idea of "universality" is and of how few they are thinking when they talk about "everybody" and "anybody". Their universalism is a fellowship of the elite - of the elite as formed by absolutism. There is hardly a rule or a requirement of classicistic aesthetics which is not based on the ideas of this absolutism. The desire is that art should have a unifor character, like the state, should produce the effect of formal perfection, like the movement of a corps, that it should be clear and precise, like a decree, and be governed by absolute rules, like the life of every subject in the state. The artist should be no more left to his own devices than any other citizen; he should rather be guided by the law, by regulations, so as not to go astray in the wilderness of his own imagination.”

CensorshipRegulationUniversalityBaroqueEverybodyNo Body
Book:The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque
Create image

“By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc. Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.”

LawResponsibilityTyrannyRegulationBureaucracyBureaucratsHuman Judgment
Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
Create image

“Most young people have rebellious, anti-authoritarian impulses. They don't like being told what, when, or how to do something. It's ironic, then, that many of these same people embrace a system in which there would be far more regulations, many more bureaucrats micromanaging their lives, and far more rules and restrictions on how things can be done.”

GovernmentYouthRebellionRegulation
Book:Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say
Create image