Art enables and liberates, cripples and enslaves

"Before Dickens there were no fogs, and before Turner no sunsets."

-- Oscar Wilde

"Art enables and liberates its audience, but it can also disable and enslave the subsequent generation of writers."

-- Craig Raine

"In every generation we recognise a leader race of masterminds whose ideas - 'class-struggle', 'Oedipus complex', 'identity crisis' - come down over us like butterfly nets." 

-- Saul Bellow

What little understanding that survives

Education is what survives when what has been learned [taught is] forgotten. 

B. F. Skinner, New Scientist, May 21, 1964. US psychologist (1904 - 1990)

Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?

Pope Julius III