Inspiring Quote of the Week

"A case could be made . . . that the Jews [of Austria in the late 1930's]. . . benefited from having doors closed against them. It would be a bad case. The humiliations were real and the resentments lasting. But there was one undoubted benefit to us all. Whole generations of Jewish literati were denied the opportunity of wasting their energies on compiling abstruse doctoral theses. They were driven instead to journalism, plain speech, direct observation and the necessity to entertain. The necessity to entertain could sometimes be the enemy of learning, but not as often as the deadly freedom to write as if nobody would ever read the results except a faculty supervisor who owed his post to the same exemption."

--Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts.

I'm only 15 pages into this book, and it is easily one of the most fascinating and engaging historical surveys that I've read in some time. Well worth checking out.