“The Last Supper is supposed to be thirteen men. Who is this woman?
"Everyone misses it, our preconceived notions of this scene are so powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes.”
Source: The Da Vinci Code
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Dan Brown 135
American author 1964Related quotes
Pearls of Wisdom
Variant: Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), p. 18
As quoted in Humphry Davy : Science & Power (1998) by David Knight, p. 87
Morals in the Book of Job, 553d, as translated in Cultural Performances in Medieval France (2007), p. 129
Original: (la) Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Ibi etenim foeda, ibi pulchra nostra cognoscimus.
III. 156–158 (tr. Robert Fagles); of Helen.
Richmond Lattimore's translation:
: Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians
if for long time they suffer hardship for a woman like this one.
Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
“There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.”
