This is E. B. White writing about common assumptions of our culture:
Many of the commonest assumptions, it seems to me, are arbitrary ones: that the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the complex more advantageous than the simple, and the fast quicker than the slow, the big greater than the small, and the world as remodeled by Man the Architect functionally sounder and more agreeable than the world as it was before he changed everything to suit his vogues and his conniptions.
(Quoted from page 48 of Essays of E. B. White, by E. B. White. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.)
For a brief biography of E. B. White, click here. For images of and relating to E. B. White, click here.
Many of the commonest assumptions, it seems to me, are arbitrary ones: that the new is better than the old, the untried superior to the tried, the complex more advantageous than the simple, and the fast quicker than the slow, the big greater than the small, and the world as remodeled by Man the Architect functionally sounder and more agreeable than the world as it was before he changed everything to suit his vogues and his conniptions.
(Quoted from page 48 of Essays of E. B. White, by E. B. White. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.)
For a brief biography of E. B. White, click here. For images of and relating to E. B. White, click here.
Comments