Today the average inhabitant of the western hemisphere knows a little of everything. He has the newspaper on his breakfast table and wireless within reach. For the evening there is the film, cards, or a meeting to complete a day spent in the office or factory where nothing that is essential has been learnt. With slight variation this picture of a low cultural average holds good over the entire range from factory-hand of clerk to manager or director. Only the personal will to culture, in whatever field and however pursued raises modern man above this level.
Johan HuizingaThe art of watching has become mere skill at rapid apperception and understanding of continuously changing visual images. The younger generation has acquired this cinematic perception to an amazing degree.
Johan HuizingaCulture requires in the first place a certain balance of material and spiritual values.
Johan HuizingaThe repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards.
Johan HuizingaThe slogan offers a counterweight to the general dispersion of thought by holding it fast to a single, utterly succinct and unforgettable expression, one which usually inspires men to immediate action. It abolishes reflection: the slogan does not argue, it asserts and commands.
Johan HuizingaScience, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might.
Johan Huizinga