It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Ezra PoundRead
If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature is essential for a nation's cultural vitality.
This quote by Ezra Pound emphasizes the crucial role of literature in the health and prosperity of a nation. When a nation's literary output diminishes, it signifies a decline in cultural values, ideas, and identity, ultimately leading to societal decay and stagnation.
Themes
LiteratureCultureDeclineNationProfound
In practice
Example use cases
During a national conference on arts and education, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of supporting literature programs.
More from Ezra Pound
All quotes βThe ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance.
Ezra PoundRead
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
Ezra PoundRead
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Ezra PoundRead
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
Ezra PoundRead
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
Ezra PoundRead
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I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.
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In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!
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Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done.
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You see, no one can teach anybody. The teacher spoils everything by thinking that he is teaching. Thus Vedanta says that within man is all knowledge-even in a boy it is so-and it requires only an awakening, and that much is the work of a teacher.
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No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.
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The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.
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