"That still today, for example, — when so many big and important things need our whole attention, when we have piled up endless treasures of thought, of poetry and above all of knowledge, of which the wisest Greeks had not the faintest idea and to a share of which every child should have a natural right ~ that today we are still compelled to waste valuable time learning every detail of the pitiful history of the Greeks, to stuff our poor brains with endless registers of names of boastful heroes ending in -ades, -atas, -enes, -eiton, &c., and, if possible, wax enthusiastic over the political fate of these cruel, short-sighted democracies, blinded with self-Jove, and based upon slavery and idleness — this is indeed a hard destiny. But if we think about it, the blame for this lies not with the Greeks but with our own narrow-mindedness."
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quoted in Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire. Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Houston_Stewart_Chamberlain
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Houston Stewart Chamberlain
1855 – 1927
englisch-deutscher Schriftsteller und Kulturphilosoph
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