'Georg Christoph Lichtenberg', p. 395
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)
“The convention by which the great events in biblical or secular history could be enacted only by magnificent physical specimens, handsome and well-groomed, went on for a long time — till the middle of the nineteenth century. Only a very few artists — perhaps only Rembrandt and Caravaggio in the first rank — were independent enough to stand against it. And I think that this convention, which was an element in the so-called grand manner, became a deadening influence on the European mind. It deadened our sense of truth, even our sense of moral responsibility.”
Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 5: The Hero as Artist
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Kenneth Clark 47
Art historian, broadcaster and museum director 1903–1983Related quotes
Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), pp. 47-48
Source: General System Theory (1968), 7. Some Aspects of System Theory in Biology, p. 166-167 as quoted in: Eugene Thacker (2004) Biomedia. University of Minnesota Press. p. 150

The American Commonwealth: Volume II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910), pp. 810–811.
1910s

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations"
Context: The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.