“Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.” AcceptingCivilizationTasteNastyRejecting Book:Modes and Morals Source: Modes and Morals
“When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.” WantKindCountryLawMotherDiesLanguageImaginationNaturalLibertyAcceptingLike YouTasteEqualMarkTemplesRejectsGoddessEnteringStatuesTranslationsOwlForeign CountriesStewStatue Of LibertyNatural DeathHash Author:Randall Jarrell
“Historically, labor unions arose when people had gotten a taste of a different lifestyle and were willing to pay a lot more for their basic livelihood and had gotten into a fix they couldn't get out of - because they had accepted the unacceptable to begin with. Accepting something you have to form a labor union to fight after the fact only tells me that people were acting against their own best (or even good) interests for a long time. I don't see any rational, coherent explanation for this sort of behavior in humans, but it's all over the place.” PeopleHumansLongDifferentFactsFormFightingInterestPayActingAcceptingWillingTasteBehaviorLong TimeLaborUnionsAcceptedLifestyleRationalExplanationLivelihoodLabor UnionDifferent Lifestyles Author:Erik Naggum
“If there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common. ... If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.” PeopleIfsWantShouldTryingMeanLanguageInterestCommonAcceptingAudienceGroupsPleaseTasteSakeAliensNeglectIdolsShould INo Respect Author:Andrei Tarkovsky
“When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.” KnowsArtMy OwnAcceptingTasteTwentiesFortyWorks Of ArtMilieu Author:W. H. Auden