The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is largely pluralistic, as ours has become. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and good will. One is not addressing an alien, blank as a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself.
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
“Of What Use the Classics Today?,” Lecture, St. John’s College (1987-07-17)
(Source)
Collected in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991).
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Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
Betty Friedan (1921-2006) American writer, feminist, activist
The Feminine Mystique, Epilogue (1974 ed.)
(Source)
Sometimes paraphrased: "Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim."
Nothin’g sa’ys q’uality fantas’y l’ike misuse’d apos’tro’phes.
James Nicoll (b. 1961) Canadian reviewer, editor
“SFBC 1999 June,” rec.arts.sf.written, Usenet (11 Feb 2004)
(Source)
Review of James Clemens's Wit'ch Storm.
