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

Thinking difficult thoughts

Another of God's greatest gifts: the ability to doubt, to think difficult thoughts and weigh conflicting options with clarity and subtlety.

Joe Klein
Time.com, Thursday, Aug. 05, 2010

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2008733,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily#ixzz0vkAOIUQ9

Future anxiety

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools the way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more

it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth
Act 5 Scene 5
Words of Macbeth