by Fergus Downie (January 2016)
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. – Orwell
There is an apocryphal story of one of Hegel’s students interrupting one of his more baffling lectures, with the naïve comment ‘but Professor, the facts state otherwise’. Quick as a flash the great metaphysician shot back, ‘So much the worse for the facts.’ more>>>
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
3 Responses
Ignatius Loyola’s famous injunction to believe because it is absurd.
Do you mean Tertullian?
Good man Bryan. Keen eye for the jesuits! . I stand corrected though by way of feeble defence the sentiment is shared!
Many thanks
Good readers always make for better writers. Although I’m still fairly certain that the Irish read too much and drink too little. As to your thesis, Fergus, spot on as usual. One of your countrymen, who I have come to admire, suggested that selected facts and righteous reason are what grifters and philosophers use to manipulate our emotions, playing to the crowd as it were. And of course, it works, Feeling is kin to an AM bowel movement; thinking, in contrast, requires some effort.