There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.
Camille PagliaI sometimes call my new system 'Italian pagan Catholicism,' but it could more accurately be called 'pragmatic liberalism,' with roots in Enlightenment political philosophy. It is a synthesis of the enduring dual elements in our culture, pagan and Judeo-Christian, Romantic and Classic.
Camille PagliaNature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Camille PagliaIn the real world, very smart people fail and mediocre people rise. Part of what makes people fail or succeed are skills that have nothing to do with IQ. Also, the idea that intelligence can be gauged by an IQ test is erroneous.
Camille PagliaI want young women when they're 14 to start thinking about what they want over the course of their lives. I think it's criminal - child abuse - that they're not told to do this [in school]. Right now it's just sex education and putting condoms on bananas. Girls should be asked to think about what they want in their lives when they're 50, 60 and 70.
Camille Paglia