All Quotes

"A second telltale sign of junk thought is the appropriation of scientific-sounding language without underlying scientific evidence or logic."

"A third important element in much of junk thought is innumeracy—a lack of understanding of basic mathematical and statistical concepts."

"Definitions so broad as to be meaningless are yet another telltale sign of junk thought."

"Expert bashing—a favorite tool of both the right and the left—is another distinguishing mark of junk thought, and the effectiveness of the technique depends on the public’s inability to distinguish among good science, bad science, and pseudoscience. Scientific evidence, however overwhelming, is dismissed by the expert-bashers as politically biased."

"The scientific consensus on global warming is a favorite target of right-wing purveyors of junk thought."

"All real scientific research must be and is subjected to rigorous scrutiny by peers. That is what separates science from pseudoscience and junk thought."

"Intellectual quackery extends throughout the landscape of academia; tenured professors in the humanities and social sciences, on the right and the left, are constantly purveying theories that are the philosophical, literary, and artistic equivalents of junk science. That many of the researchers consider themselves intellectuals is sad but unremarkable in the annals of quackery within academia: junk thought with an intellectual patina fosters anti-intellectualism as effectively as junk science with a scientific patina fosters public misunderstanding and suspicion of real science."

"No one can legitimately claim to be both a serious scientist and a serious opponents of evolutionism. In the social sciences, by contrast, there is no shortage of credentialed experts to endorse any position, however untethered from both common sense and scholarly evidence."

"Finally, the simplistic slogans of junk thought are perfectly suited to modern mass media, which must fixate on novelty in order to catch the eyes and ears of a public with an increasingly short attention span."

"The decline in newspaper reading after the early seventies was a miner’s canary for an accelerating and relentless abbreviation of the public’s attention span, now fragmented into millions of bits and bytes by the unlimited electronically and digitally generated distractions that make up our way of life."

"Printed works do not take up mental space simply by virtue of being there; attention must be paid or their content, whether simple or complex, can never be truly assimilated. The willed attention demanded by print is the antithesis of the reflexive distraction encouraged by infotainment media, whether one is talking about the tunes on an iPod, a picture flashing briefly on a home page, a text message, a video game, or the latest offering of “reality” TV. That all of these sources of information and entertainment are capable of simultaneously engendering distraction and absorption accounts for much of their snakelike charm."

"The media really do constitute a self-renewing, unified organism that cannot be contained or modified in any fundamental sense by lopping off some of the more malignant clusters of cells."

"The first serious study on the subject, released in 2007 by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital, suggested that videos like Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby may actually impede language development in children between the ages of eight and sixteen months."

"The more sophisticated video games require intense concentration, but in the end, the cognitive reward for the master of the game amounts to little more than an improved ability to navigate other, more complex video games. Reading good books, by contrast, does little to improve reading skills—certainly not after the age of seven or eight—but it does expand the depth and range of the reader’s knowledge and imagination in just about every area of conceivable interest to human beings."

"The problem is that the more obsessed people are with infotainment, the less likely they are to read anything."

"If the books are the first mighty and indispensable pillar of intellectual life, conversation is the second."

"Politicians, like members of the media, are both the creators and the creatures of a public distrustful of complexity, nuance, and sophisticated knowledge."

"Public ignorance and anti-intellectualism are not identical, of course, but they are certainly kissing cousins."

"A president may be described as stubborn, or as impatient, or as a sexual libertine—even, on rare occasions, as a liar—but it would be unthinkable for “objective” reporters, in print or on television, to bluntly raise the question, “Is this man smart enough to be in charge of the country?” It is a question that ought to be asked openly about every man and woman who seeks high office."

"Intelligence itself has not yet become a disqualifier for the modern American presidency, but the electability of an intelligent candidate often seems to depend on his ability to soften and downplay his “egghead” side."

"Out-of-power (in Washington) liberal intellectuals also have a good deal to answer for, and one of their most serious failures of vision has been a reluctance to acknowledge the political significance of public ignorance."

"While an angry public may be the short-term solution, an ignorant public is the long-term problem in American public life."

"The general decline in American civic, cultural, and scientific literacy has encouraged political polarization because the field of debate is often left to those who care most intensely—with an out-of-the-mainstream passion—about a specific political and cultural agenda."

"As both dumbness and smartness are defined downward—among intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike—it becomes much easier to convince people of the validity of extreme positions. Not only basic knowledge but the ability to think critically are required to understand the factual errors (as distinct from differences of opinion) but generally provide the foundation for policies at the far end of the political spectrum."

"Right-wing intellectuals, particularly those involved in government, constantly bleat about the lamentable state of cultural literacy in America, but what they mean is their version of cultural literacy and American history."

"In the early 1990s, a brouhaha over an attempt to develop national standards for the teaching of history offered an exemplary and depressing demonstration of the politically motivated pigheadedness shared by many hardline conservative and left-wing multicultural list intellectuals."

"Citizens of the “new digital democracy” do not have to vote, or read books, or spend any waking part of their days without the combination of hypnotic comfort and artificial stimulation offered on screen media by the infotainment industry.…Like most politicians, most media opinion makers choose to pretend that dumbness is not being defined downward and to flatter Americans by telling them that they and their children are really the smartest, best educated generations ever to inhabit this nation."

"“The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.” In 1837, Emerson struck that note mainly as a rhetorical device, in a young nation obviously engaged in building up its intellectual capital. But Emerson’s straw man has come to life in America’s new age of unreason, and the inescapable theme of our time is the erosion of memory and knowledge. Memory loss has made us bad stewards of our intellectual inheritance, and the dissipation of our cultural storehouse gives rise in turn to new cycles of forgetting. Anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism flourish in a mix that includes addiction to infotainment, every form of superstition and credulity, and an educational system that does a poor job of teaching not only basic skills but the logic underlying those skills."

"Science—how deep a faith it inspired in the Enlightenment rationalists of America’s founding generation and their freethinking late nineteenth century heirs!—can by itself provide no remedy for those who, out of ignorance or in servitude to an anti-rational form of faith, know little and care less about the basic principles that constitute the scientific method."

"It would take awesome courage for a candidate to say to voters: “The problem isn’t just that you were lied to. The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. The problem is the two-thirds of us can’t find Iraq on a map, and many members of Congress don’t know a Shiite from a Sunni. The problem is that the public doesn’t know enough or care enough about culture to be outraged when a United States secretary of defense, informed that some of the oldest artifacts of Western civilization are being looted from a Baghdad Museum on our watch, says dismissively, ‘Stuff happens.’ The problem is that most of us don’t bother to read newspapers or even watch the news on television. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy.” It is so much easier, so much safer politically, to simply say, “You were victims of a lie,” than to suggested that both voters and their elected representatives, in both parties, must shoulder much of the blame for their willingness to be deceived."

"There is no such thing as right-wing or left-wing science—although there are certainly left-wing and right-wing scientists—but respected researchers generally agree on what separates real science, dedicated to the search for truth in the natural world, from pseudosciences designed to serve political, religious, or social ends."

"One problem that cries out for collaboration between liberal and conservative intellectuals is the pandering of higher education institutions to students who apparently want to major in infotainment."

"How can it be that American culture has so debased itself that institutions calling themselves universities, and academic bodies calling themselves English departments, actually give course credit for writing “fear journals”? The job of higher education is not to instruct students in popular culture but to expose them to something better."

"It is possible that nothing will help. The nation’s memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America’s best minds. I too am nibbling at the edges by talking about the need for political leaders who address Americans as thinking adults; for intellectuals willing to step up and bring their knowledge, instead of a lust for power, to the public square; for educators devoted to teaching and learning rather than to the latest fads in pop psychology. None of the suggestions addresses the core problem created by the media—the pacifiers of the mind that permeate our homes, schools, and politics. There is a little evidence to indicate that Americans have either the desire or the will to lessen their dependency on the easy satisfactions held out by the video and digital world; on the contrary, the successful marketing of infant videos suggests that many parents are eager to draw their children into the infotainment snare before they have any chance to explore the world on their own."

"If there is to be an alternative to the culture of distraction, it can only be created one family at a time, by parents and citizens determined to preserve a saving remnant of those who prize memory and true learning above all else. Adult self-control, not digital parental controls, is the chief requirement for the transmission of individual and historical memory."

"Anyone who values self-reliance will be changed for the better by limiting screen time, and for parents—who literally hold the future in their hands—there is no way, apart from the force of example, to raise children whose minds are not absolutely in thrall to commercially generated images."

"Like all conservationists, a cultural conservationist in today’s America can only act in hope while living with amply justified fear."

"Skip Schwink - Doctor"

"For days I didn't know if my file was being ignored or taken seriously."

"When I from life's unrest had earned the grace Of utter ease beside a quiet stream; When all that was had mingled in a dream To eyes awakened out of time and place; Then in the cup of one great moment's space Was crushed the living wine from things that seem; I drank the joy of very Beauty's gleam, And saw God's glory face to shining face.Almost my brow was chastened to the ground, But for an inner Voice that said: "Arise! Wisdom is wisdom only to the wise: Thou art thyself the Royal thou hast crowned: In Beauty thine own beauty thou hast found, And thou hast looked on God with God's own eyes.""

"For sorrow and joy are one, and all the past And all the future mingle in a kiss."

"They said: "She dwelleth in some place apart, Immortal Truth, within whose eyes Who looks may find the secret of the skies And healing for life's smart."I sought Her in loud caverns underground,— On heights where lightnings flashed and fell; I scaled high Heaven; I stormed the gates of Hell, But Her I never foundTill thro' the tumults of my Quest I caught A whisper: "Here, within thy heart, I dwell; for I am thou: behold, thou art The Seeker and the Sought.""

"Wo ist dein Selbst zu finden? Immer in der tiefsten Bezauberung, die du erlitten hast. ... Die ganze Seele ist nie beisammen, außer in der Entzückung."

"Going on camera I just instantly fell in love with it. I get off knowing I’m getting people off. I just feel comfortable in front of the camera, I like sex, obviously, and I really like getting to explore sex. I want to keep on doing this for as long as I can."

"I think it's because we grow up in such restricted and unaware circumstances. Once I started exploring my sexuality, I never wanted to look back. It was the whole dog-on-a-leash thing."

"Individual rights have been recognized by our jurisprudence only after long and costly struggles. They should not be struck down by anything less than the gravest necessity. We assent to their temporary suspension only to the extent that they constitute a clear and present danger to the effective prosecution of the war and only as a means of preserving those rights undiminished for ourselves and future generations. Before giving such an assent, therefore, we should be convinced of the existence of a reasonable necessity and be satisfied that the suspension is in accordance with the legislative intention."

"Common sense and justice dictate that a citizen accused of a crime should have the fullest hearing possible, plus the opportunity to present every reasonable defense. Only an unenlightened jurisprudence condemns an individual without according him those rights. Such a denial is especially oppressive where a full hearing might disclose that the administrative action underlying the prosecution is the product of excess wartime emotions."

"Experience demonstrates that in time of war individual liberties cannot always be entrusted safely to uncontrolled administrative discretion. Illustrative of this proposition is the remark attributed to one of the members of petitioner's local board to the effect that "I do not have any damned use for Jehovah's Witnesses." The presumption against foreclosing the defense of illegal and arbitrary administrative action is therefore strong."

"Criminal punishment for disobedience of an arbitrary and invalid order is objectionable regardless of whether the order be interlocutory or final."

"That an individual should languish in prison for five years without being accorded the opportunity of proving that the prosecution was based upon arbitrary and illegal administrative action is not in keeping with the high standards of our judicial system. Especially is this so where neither public necessity nor rule of law or statute leads inexorably to such a harsh result. The law knows no finer hour than when it cuts through formal concepts and transitory emotions to protect unpopular citizens against discrimination and persecution. I can perceive no other course for the law to take in this case."