"For aesthetics is the mother of ethics.... Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe—not empirically, alas, but only theoretically—that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens."
Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940), Russian-born U.S. poet, critic. Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1987. |
"The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with."
Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940), Russian-born-U.S. poet, critic. Address, 1984, delivered at Williams College. "A Commencement Address," Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986). |
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Joseph Brodsky
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