The Saunterer

Friedrich Nietzsche on rushing to judgement

Friedrich Nietzsche’s reminder:

    And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

    (Quoted from page 276 of Dancing on One Foot: Growing Up in Nazi Germany. A Memoir, by Shanti Elke Bannwart. Sunstone Press, 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Friedrich Nietzsche, click here. For images of or relating to Friedrich Nietzsche, click here.
    For a brief biography of Shanti Elke Bannwart, click here. For images of or relating to Shanti Elke Bannwart, click here.

Virginia Woolf and Walter de la Mare on how to build a creative mind

    The most effective way is not through listening to lectures. Nor is it through conversation. Nor through reading. The most effective way is to write seriously and regularly: 

    Virginia Woolf: Nothing has really happened until it has been described. Unless you catch ideas on the wing and nail them down, you will soon cease to have any.

    Walter de la Mare: Until we begin to argue, we seldom attempt to define the words we are using. We may then discover how vague and inexact are the meanings that we attach to them—meanings which are not only the concern of the intellect but no less also of our feelings.

    (Quoted from page 186 of How about it, Writer?, by H. Charles Romesburg. Lulu Press, 2005.)
    For a brief biography of Virginia Woolf, click here. For images of or relating to Virginia Woolf, click here.
    For a brief biography of Walter de la Mare, click here. For images of or relating to Walter de la Mare, click here.

Robert Nisbet on a thing dictators don’t tolerate

    One thing is radicals, especially artists and writers. And the other, explains Robert Nisbet, is organizations of people: 

    The destruction of the independent labor unions in Nazi Germany was followed by the prohibition of independent economic organizations of every kind. It was not the fact of labor that was central; it was the social fact of union. All autonomous organizations were destroyed and made illegal: professions, service clubs, voluntary mutual aid groups, fraternal associations, even philatelist and musical societies. Such organizations were regarded, and correctly, by the totalitarian government as potential sources of future resistance, if only because in them people were brought together for purposes, however innocent, that did not reflect those of the central government. As organizations they interposed themselves between the people as a society and the people as the masses.

    (Quoted from page 202 of The Quest for Community, by Robert Nisbet. Oxford University Press, 1953.)
    For a brief biography of Robert A. Nisbet, click here. For images of or relating to Robert A. Nisbet, click here.

László Moholy-Nagy on the true artist

    What do they contribute to the world? László Moholy-Nagy tells:

    The true artist is the grindstone of the senses; he sharpens eyes, mind, and feeling; he interprets ideas and concepts through his own media.

    (Quoted from page 55 of Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography, by David Levi Strauss. Aperture, 2014.)
    For a brief biography of the László Moholy-Nagy, click here. For images of or relating to the László Moholy-Nagy, click here.
    For a brief biography of David Levi Strauss, click here. For images of or relating to David Levi Strauss, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on wild nature as better than heaven

    If the importance of wild nature mystifies financiers, it doesn't Henry David Thoreau:

    White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

    (Quoted from page 68 of Walden and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” by Henry David Thoreau. Signet Classic, 1960.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Terry Pratchett on art as a fabulous lie

    Art is fantasy, and great art is great fantasy that is better than reality. Terry Pratchett:

    I barely read a book for pleasure when I was at junior school and got into reading only because my mother promised me a penny for every page I read to her properly. That cost her some money in the beginning, and then I found a book called “The Wind in the Willows,” by Kenneth Grahame, and I just exploded. There were rats and moles and badgers and they were all acting like humans, and I thought to myself, This is a lie, but what a fabulous lie! After that I scoured the local library and read everything.

    (Quoted from page 8 of The New York Times Book Review, August 17, 2014.)
    For a brief biography of Terry Pratchett, click here. For images of or relating to Terry Pratchett, click here.

Elizabeth Taylor on telling one’s own fortune

    In 1974, five days before she and Richard Burton announced their divorce, Elizabeth Taylor said:

    Nothing will ever separate us. We will probably be married another ten years.

    (Quoted from page 17 of Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions, by Gerd Gigerenzer. Viking, 2014.)
    For a brief biography of Elizabeth Taylor, click here. For images of or relating to Elizabeth Taylor, click here.
    For a brief biography and a picture of Gerd Gigerenzer, click here.

Hugo Burghauser on Arturo Toscanini's special greatness

    You wonder about the realness of telepathic communication after reading bassoonist Hugo Burghauser’s observation:

    Toscanini was able to project whatever was in the score and in his mind. The conception of great interpretation, of what it should be, can quite often be found in fine artistic minds, but to project such ideas into the orchestra unmistakably, by technical means that are absolutely convincing — which Toscanini did — this is a sort of miracle which I can explain only as a result of a real capability of telepathic communication; and in fact he rarely used words to communicate what he wanted. About half a bar before the occurrence of a detail in the music you saw already on his face and in his gesture what he was coming to and would want. This was extraordinary: the parallel conduction of what was going on now and what was coming the next moment. It was an entirely unheard-of ability, almost like the clairvoyance of a seer.

    (Quoted from page 15 of The Golden Age of Conductors, by John W. Knight. Meredith Music, 2010.)
    For brief biological information on Hugo Burghauser, click here. For images of or relating to Hugo Burghauser, click here.
    For a brief biography of Arturo Toscanini, click here. For images of or relating to Arturo Toscanini, click here.
    For a brief biography of John W. Knight, click here. For images of or relating to John W. Knight, click here.

Lily Mazahery on liberating the women of Iran

    As she tells it,

    I know it’s odd that it’s a Chinese, not an Iranian, proverb, but I keep this proverb on my desk. It reads, “When a finger points at the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger.” I like to think that in my small way I am the pointing finger to a much larger concept than one case here, one case there, but to the eventual liberation of women in Iran. That goal keeps me motivated. The goal is all that matters, and my goal is to see women free enough to dance on the moon.

    (Quoted from page 132 of One Can Make a Difference, by Ingrid Newkirk. Adams Media, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Lily Mazahery, click here. For images of or relating to Lily Mazahery, click here.
    For a brief biography of Ingrid Newkirk, click here. For images of or relating to Ingrid Newkirk, click here.

Constance Holden on the Ebola virus and the Athenians

    All their gods and goddesses could not save the Athenians. In the circumstances, the Athenians did what many attacked by strong viruses do — they died. How do we know? Hear science writer Constance Holden's summary, giving an important fact, stating alternative hypotheses that are possible explanations of the important fact and, finally, circumstantial evidence that supports one of the hypotheses:

    According to estimates based on the writings of historian-general Thucydides, up to 300,000 Athenians — one in every three — were felled during a Spartan siege by a mystery disease whose symptoms included high fevers, blistered skin, bilious vomiting, intestinal ulcerations, and diarrhea. Most victims died about a week after onset. Over the years, people have postulated causes [made hypotheses] ranging from bubonic plague to measles to a combination of influenza and staphylococci — but none seemed to fit.
    But in a letter in the April-June [1996] journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Patrick E. Olson, an epidemiologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, and his colleagues propose that Ebola virus may be the culprit, . . . [noting that] in both the ancient and modern cases, victims died quickly, and both diseases appeared and vanished suddenly. In Athens there were widespread deaths among caregivers, but few among the attacking Spartans. This pattern suggested that the disease, like most strains of Ebola, was spread by personal contact and not by airborne pathogens. But what really got Olson’s pulse racing were the reports of ‘hiccupping’ among 15 percent of the Zaire Ebola patients — an unusual symptom also noted by Thucydides, himself a plague survivor.
    There are some other tantalizing hints: Santorini Island near Athens is the site of a Minoan fresco featuring green monkeys, a species known to harbor Ebola. And because Athens was a major port, the virus could easily have been spread by sailors from ships that traded with Africa.
    Epidemiologist Karl M. Johnson . . . says that the interpretation proposed by Olson is definitely ‘suggestive. . . . You’d have to say it’s at least as likely as any of the other ones proposed.’ Proving it is going to be difficult, however. The Greeks cremated their dead, along with any genetic evidence from the Ebola virus.

    (“Ebola: Ancient history of “new” disease?” by Constance Holden. 1996. Science 272:1591. Quoted from page 76 of Best Research Practices, by H. Charles Romesburg. Lulu Enterprises, 2009.)

    For bibliographic information about Constance Holden, click here.