“The history of culture shows that foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom. It does not flourish on the fields of pure ignorance but on the fields tirelessly plowed by doctors and professors. Great absurdities do not flourish where one is busy with everyday life. No wonder that sometimes most vigorous thinkers come up with utmost stupidities.”
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Witold Gombrowicz 9
Polish writer 1904–1969Related quotes
As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

“The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.”
Source: The Dance of Life http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300671.txt (1923), Ch. 3
“There is more honor in a field well plowed than in a field steeped in blood.”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book II: The Black Cauldron (1965), Chapter 3
Context: "I have marched in many a battle host," Adaon answered quietly, "but I have also planted seeds and reaped the harvest with my own hands. And I have learned there is greater honor in a field well plowed than in a field steeped in blood."

On the Unspeakable, Avant-Pop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-Pop:_Fiction_for_a_Daydream_Nation, p. 150
Source: Communications of an Advertising Man (1961), p. 81

As quoted "John von Neumann (1903 - 1957)" by Eugene Wigner, in Year book of the American Philosophical Society (1958); later in Symmetries and Reflections : Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (1967), p. 261

Citizens Advice Bureaux (August 15, 2007)
“Culture can flourish only under the protection of a society with aristocratic characteristics.”
Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 12.