It is likely … that human society cannot exist without some source of sacredness. Those states which have sought openly to remove it have tended in t… - Richard M. Weaver

There is much to indicate that modern publication wishes to minimize discussion. … For one thing, there is the technique of display, with its implied evaluations. This does more of the average man’s thinking for him than he suspects. For another, there is the stereotyping of whole phrases. These are carefully chosen not to stimulate reflection, but to evoke stock responses of approbation or disapprobation. Headlines and advertising teem with them, and we seem to approach a point at which failure to make the stock response is regarded as faintly treasonable. … Journalism becomes a monstrous discourse of Protagoras, which charms by hypnotizing and thwarts that participation without which one is not a thinking man.

The realization that just as no action is really indifferent, so no utterance is without its responsibility introduces, it is true, a certain strenuosity into life.

We cannot be too energetic in reminding our nihilists and positivists that this is a world of action and history.