The theory of empiricism is plausible because it assumes that accuracy about small matters prepares the way for valid judgment about large ones. What… - Richard M. Weaver

All of us have had the experience of finding a particularly felicitous phrase in poetry and of feeling: “This is what the world really means; he has hit it closer than anyone has ever hit it before.”

Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, Plato’s Phaedrus is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.

Cultural freedom is in special danger today because so much of our life has been politicized. … With governments which are popular and free, but which allow political sanction to pressures building up against certain types of cultural expression, … the pressure … moves to condemn on grounds which are social and political, and its desire is for uniformity, standardization, consolidation, and all the other features of Gleichschaltung, as it moves to protect from criticism and even from realistic depiction something over which people have become politically excited. In our American experience, these pressures have been largely social.