“It obliges one to think with a particular kind of logic and severity. If it is nonsense, it will not go into Latin…I regard it as cruelty to the young to deprive them of that insight into language…Who would have thought Thatcher would be responsible for introducing the Prussian system, of dictating from central government the content of education in the supposed interest of the state? Translation into Latin was the great stamp and mark of English classical scholarship…My fatal decision was not to be pedantic and leave it in Latin. I had written Et Tiberim multo spumantem sanguine cerno: from Virgil in the Aeneid.”

—  Enoch Powell

And at the last minute I said, 'I can't put that out in Latin, that's pedantic'...In Latin, it would have been lost.
Interview with Valerie Grove, The Times (6 August 1993), p. 15
1990s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It obliges one to think with a particular kind of logic and severity. If it is nonsense, it will not go into Latin…I re…" by Enoch Powell?
Enoch Powell photo
Enoch Powell 155
British politician 1912–1998

Related quotes

Timothy Leary photo

“The language of God is not English or Latin; the language of God is cellular and molecular.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Harvard Law School Forum (1966)

Susan Cooper photo

“But why Latin?” demanded Barney.
“I don’t know, the monks just always used it, that’s all, it was one of their things. I suppose it’s a religious-sounding kind of language.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), Chapter 3 (p. 31)

Ivan Illich photo

“The Latin osculum is neither very old nor frequent. It is one of three words that can be translated by the English, "kiss."”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

The Cultivation of Conspiracy (1998)
Context: The Latin osculum is neither very old nor frequent. It is one of three words that can be translated by the English, "kiss." In comparison with the affectionate basium and the lascivious suavium, osculum was a latecomer into classical Latin, and was used in only one circumstance as a ritual gesture: In the second century, it became the sign given by a departing soldier to a woman, thereby recognizing her expected child as his offspring.
In the Christian liturgy of the first century, the osculum assumed a new function. It became one of two high points in the celebration of the Eucharist. Conspiratio, the mount-to-mouth kiss, became the solemn liturgical gesture by which participants in the cult-action shared their breath or spirit with one another. It came to signify their union in one Holy Spirit, the community that takes shape in God's breath. The ecclesia came to be through a public ritual action, the liturgy, and the soul of this liturgy was the conspiratio. Explicitly, corporeally, the central Christian celebration was understood as a co-breathing, a con-spiracy, the bringing about of a common atmosphere, a divine milieu.

Heinrich Heine photo

“If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

As quoted in The Medical Record No. 674 (6 October 1883); also in And I Quote : The Definitive Collection of Quotes, Sayings, and Jokes for the Contemporary Speechmaker (1992) by Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans and Andrew Frothingham, p. 447

Rachel Caine photo

“It’s in Latin.”
“So? What does it say?”
“I don’t read Latin!”
“You’re kidding. I thought all geniuses read Latin. Isn’t that the international language for smart people?”

Source: You're kidding. I thought all geniuses read Latin. Isn't that the international language for smart people?"-Shane (Glass Houses)

Edward Heath photo

“I think Churchill would be appalled at the Thatcher government.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

1989.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

“…for the teaching of this kind I will devote myself to translating what is said more fully by many authors, and especially those whom mother Greece educated, whilst the Latins were oppressed by lack,... of knowledge.”
...ad doctrinam huiusmodi copiosius a perpluribus dicta auctoribus, et praecipue ab his quos mater educavit Graecia, Latinorum cogente penuria, . . . transferenda conferam

Alfano I, Archbishop of Salerno (1015–1085) Archbishop of Salerno

From the preface to his translation http://www.sal.tohoku.ac.jp/phil/DIDASCALIA/2CHBURNE.PDF of the Premnon phisicon of Nemesius.

John Napier photo

“27 Proposition. The image, marke, name, and number of the beast: are of the first great Romane beast, and whole Latine impyre universallie, and not of the second beaste, or Antichrist alone in particular.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593), The First and Introductory Treatise

Alfredo Rocco photo

Related topics