Educators From The United States

"Our own flaws are almost incredibly irritating when they show up in the words and actions of someone with power and authority over us."

"Active idiots carry their dysfunction into positions of leadership and remain oblivious to the havoc they wreak."

"Idiot Bosses are mutant hiccups of organizational evolution with cockroach-like immunity to calamities that wipe out truly talented and creative people."

"After studying idiot bosses for more than two decades, I finally understand why females in certain species eat their young."

"The teacher's equipment gives him an everlasting job. His work is never done. His getting ready for this work is never quite complete."

"[P]hilosophy is not a matter for adjustment, as a means, to national requirements, but every nation and individual that cultivates philosophy should aim at having a true philosophy."

"It is without doubt true that all men, of whatever race or degree of civilization, are essentially alike; they constitute what certain authorities in anthropology have fitly called "a spiritual unity." But for the individual who cannot expect to find within himself whatever is necessary to understand and interpret this unity, and especially for the observer who does not care even to detect and recognize the existence of such a unity, the difference between Orient and Occident is a puzzle—perpetually baffling and seemingly insoluble."

"[M]an when not stimulated by hope or necessity is naturally a lazy animal."

"This reporter, who invited Dr. Hoover to lunch recently in hopes of learning definitive ways to spot idiots and thwart them before they do too much damage. She came away feeling like, well, an idiot. But not to worry: Dr. Hoover, who has a master's degree in family and marriage therapy and a doctorate in organizational dynamics, says idiotism is a treatable condition. He said his book... is as much a primer for I-Bosses as it is a balm for their beleaguered subordinates."

"We realize, and with our inborn equipment can appreciate, the moving power of music; but to define, in the usual sense of the term definition, what music really is, will be forever impossible. The fact indeed that music—like love, electricity and other elemental forces—cannot be defined is its special glory. It is a peculiar, mysterious power; quite in a class by itself, although with certain aspects which it shares with the other arts."

"The significant development of the Harvard Band is chiefly attributable to the artistic skill and enterprise of Leroy Anderson. Anderson has a remarkable inborn sense of rhythm and magnetic authority as a conductor. While in college he was a ranking student in the Department of Music and has no small skill as a composer, as may be seen from his exciting potpourri Wintergreen for President, including tunes by Gershwin and some of his own."

"The sensational style of Prometheus is augmented by the use of a color machine which flashes upon a screen hues supposed to supplement the various moods of the music. How many of these experiments will be incorporated into the accepted idiom of music, time alone will tell; but they prove conclusively that modern music is thoroughly awake and is proving true to that spirit of freedom which is the breath of its being."

"A glance at the score shows how sadly the pedagogue might go astray in judgment of the work, without a hearing of it, and furthermore, the imagination of the hearer must be in sympathy with the imagination of the composer, if he would know full enjoyment: for this symphonic poem provokes swooning thoughts, such as come to the partakers of leaves and flowers of hemp; there are the stupefying perfumes of charred frankincense and grated sandal-root."

"Chabrier (1841–1894) is noted for a bold exuberance and vividness of expression, for a sense of humor and for a power of orchestral color and brilliance which have not been duplicated. … Born in the South of France, the hot blood of that magic land seems to throb in his music."

"It may be granted that Debussy's melodic line is very fluid and elastic, like Wagner's "continuous melody," not definitely sectionalized by balanced phrases or set cadences. But it surely has its own right to existence—music being pre-eminently the art of freedom—and let us remember that Nature herself has melting outlines, shadowy vistas and subtle rhythms. Debussy, in fact, is the poet of the "indefinite" and the "suggestive" and his music has had great influence in freeing expression from scholastic bond."

"Listz was undoubtedly encouraged in his revolutionary aims by Wagner's fiery courage."

"In general, Chopin's style is homophonic—wondrous lyric melodies which seem to float on waves of richly colored sound. But there is also much subtly used polyphony, i. e., delightful phrases in inner voices and imitative effects between the different parts."

"Thus a very etherial, magical quality of tone is produced, especially in the upper ranges of the instrument."

"The Introductory chords dissolve the dream which the music has evoked, and we are back once more in the world of reality."

"The Development, beginning in measure 132, is a striking example of how difficult it was—even for an exponent of freedom in musical expression like Schumann—to break loose from the shackles of arbitrary form."

"The best eulogy of Schumann is the recognition that many of the tendencies in modern music, which we now take for granted, date from him: the exaltation of freedom and fancy over the mere formal presentation, the union of broad culture with musical technique, and the recognition of music as the art closest in touch with the aspirations of humanity. He was an idealist with such perseverance and clearness of aim that his more characteristic work can never die."

"In Schubert we do not look for the development of a complicated plot but give ourselves up unreservedly to the enjoyment of pure melodic line, couched in terms of sensuously delightful tone-color. The transitional passage of the Recapitulation (measures 231–253) illustrates Schubert's fondness for modulation just for its own sake; we care not what the objective point of the music may be—enthralled, as we are, by the magical shifts of scene."

"Another favorite means of arresting the attention was by modulation; not used in a constructive in different keys, but to furnish the ear with a purely sensuous delight, corresponding to that which the eye derives from the kaleidoscopic colors of a sunset."

"Schumann claimed that his object in writing music was to influence the imagination of the listeners that they could go on dreaming for themselves."

"Finally, Beethoven's career coincided with momentous changes and upheavals in the social, political and artistic world. He is the embodiment of that spirit of individualism, of human freedom and self-respect which found its expression in the French Revolution, in our American War of Independence and in the entire alteration of social standards. Beethoven at all costs resolved to be himself. With him music ceases to be a mere "concourse of sweet sounds"; it must always bring some message to the brooding human soul, and be something more than a skilful example of abstract ingenuity. These personal tendencies of Beethoven were fostered by the spirit of the times, and his music became in turn a vital expression of revolt against existing conditions and of passionate aspiration towards something better."

"The G minor Symphony is universally acknowledged to be the highest achievement of 18th century instrumental music and is also premonitory of that subjective spirit peculiar to the 19th century. It will remain immortal so long as human beings are capable of being touched by sincere revelation of emotion combined with a perfection of utterance which seems fairly Divine. This delicate treatment and this exquisite finish are two prominent characteristics of Mozart's style. Truly the Symphony is the quintessence of Mozart in terms of sound and rhythm, and we need but to listen to his message and receive it with grateful appreciation. ... The first movement begins at once with a gracefully poised theme sung by the violins, a theme which may be likened in its outlines to the purity of a Greek statue. The entrancing effect of this melody cannot be realized except on the orchestra, for it seems to float on the gently pulsating chords of the violas like a beautiful flower."

"Beginning with Beethoven, however, composers began to exhibit great freedom in the application of Sonata-Form."

"Next to rhythm, modulation is the most stimulating and enchanting element in music. No composition of any scope can be considered truly great unlesss it abounds in beautiful modulations. Certain composers, to be sure, have in this respect more genius than others—notably Schubert, Chopin, Wagner and Franck whose music seems to waft us along on a magic carpet of delight. But just as Unity depends upon a definite basic tonality, so Variety is gained by this very freedom of modulation. … By the perfect balance in his works of these two related elements a genius may be definitely recognized."

"Just as poetry and prose are a series of stanzas or sentence, so a musical composition is a succession of definitely organized portions of thought and emotion, in terms of rhythm and sound. In the heart of a composition, to be sure, we often find a great freedom in the phraseology, comparible to blank verse or to a rhapsodic kind of prose."

"[A] knowledge of Bach is the beginning of musical wisdom."

"[T]he firmness of structure inherent in the canonic form is perfectly compatible with genuine freedom and poetry of inspiration."

"[T]he chief melody, often in the upper voice, seems to float on underlying waves of sound."

"[T]he rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, apeals at once to our own physical vitality."

"One of the peculiar characteristics of music is that it is both the most natural and least artificial of the arts, and as well the most complicated and subtle."

"[O]f all the arts, music makes the most direct appeal to the emotions and to those shadowy, but real portions of our being called the imagination and the soul. Emotion is as indispensible to music as love to religion."

"It speaks to our feelings and imaginations, as it were by suggestion; reaching for this very reason depths of our being quite beyond the power of mere words."

"Music is of such power and glory that we should be ready to devote to its study as much time as to a foreign language."

"[[Music|[M]usic]] requires active coöperation by the hearer."

"Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late."

"It is not enough to keep the Commandments, though we must; it is not enough to love one another as ourselves, though we must. The one thing needful, the unum necessarium of the Kingdom, is to love as He loves us, which is the love of joy in suffering and sacrifice, like Roland and Olivier charging into battle to their death defending those they love as they cry "Mon joie"; that is the music of Christian Culture. (Ch. 1)"

"What is Christian Culture? It is essentially the Mass. That is not my or anyone's opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of two thousand years of history. (Ch. 1)"

"I believe it is imprudent to document the disaster quite so much as some of us have. By publishing his achievements you give the Devil more than his due. The question is what can be done—what can and what must be done, because there isn't any choice. (Ch. 1)"

"The restoration of reason presupposes the restoration of love, and we can only love what we know because we have first touched, tasted, smelled, heard and seen. From that encounter with exterior reality, interior responses naturally arise, movements motivating, urging, releasing energies, infinitely greater than atoms, of intelligence and will. Without these motives, thought and action are aimless, sometimes random, more frequently mechanical, having an order but a tyrannical order, that is, an order imposed from without. (Ch. 1)"

"Like many Catholics, I have been troubled and confused in the years since this Dark Night of the Church set in. "I sleep and my heart watcheth." (Ch. 1)"

"It is commonly agreed also that both "great" and "good" can be judged only from a certain distance. Contemporary works can be appreciated and enjoyed but not very properly judged. (Appendix)"

"Taking all that was best in the Greco-Roman world into itself, Western tradition has given us the thousand good books as a preparation for the great ones—and for all studies in the arts and sciences. Without them all studies are inhumane. The brutal athlete and foppish aesthete suffer vices opposed to the virtue of Newman's "gentleman." Anyone working at college, whether in the pure arts and sciences or the practical ones, will discover he has made a quantum leap when he gets even a small amount of cultural ground under him: he will grow up like an undernourished plant suddenly fertilized and watered. (Appendix)"

"Unless the mind achieves its perfection in the making of conceptual judgments, religion and philosophy cannot be understood; and with religion and philosophy gone, all human activity is rudderless. (Ch. 1)"

"Peace at the price of one's reason can only be that "evil peace" St. Augustine speaks of as the violent enforcement of injustice. (Ch. 1)"

"There is no such thing as victimless crime any more than a free lunch. There is no such thing as a Christianity in which the commandments of God are accommodated to the Rights of Man. (Ch. 1)"

"It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see."