The Treason of the Clerks

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>>>