The young come to us creatures of imagination and strong affection; they want to feel, but they don’t know how—that is to say, they do not know the r… - Richard M. Weaver

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The young come to us creatures of imagination and strong affection; they want to feel, but they don’t know how—that is to say, they do not know the right objects and the right measures. And it is entirely certain that if we leave them to the sort of education obtainable today for extra-scholastic sources, the great majority will be schooled in the two vices of sentimentality and brutality. Now great poetry, rightly interpreted, is the surest antidote to both of these. In contrast with journalists and others, the great poets relate the events of history to a pure or noble metaphysical dream, which our students will have all their lives as a protecting arch over their system of values.

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About Richard M. Weaver

Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr (March 3, 1910—April 1, 1963) was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid-20th-century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric.

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Additional quotes by Richard M. Weaver

The Communist … chooses some feature of an order where there is a potential resentment, or he may choose some feature about which people are simply soft-headed—that is to say, confused or uncertain. It may be the existence of rich men; it may be the right to acquire and use property privately; it may be the idea of discipline and regard in education; it may be some system of preferential advancement which produces envy in the less successful. His most common maneuver … is to vilify this as founded upon “prejudice.” The burden of his argument usually is that since these do not have perfectly rationalized bases, they have no right to exist.

Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets.

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