“Thus it has come about that our theoretical and critical literature, instead of giving plain, straightforward arguments in which the author at least always knows what he is saying and the reader what he is reading, is crammed with jargon, ending at obscure crossroads where the author loses its readers. Sometimes these books are even worse: they are just hollow shells. The author himself no longer knows just what he is thinking and soothes himself with obscure ideas which would not satisfy him if expressed in plain speech.”
On War (1832), Book 2
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Carl von Clausewitz 68
German-Prussian soldier and military theorist 1780–1831Related quotes

“The reader collaborates with the author in every book, or The reader is co-author in every book.”
Tout livre a pour collaborateur son lecteur
Source: Biographical notice http://www.evene.fr/celebre/biographie/maurice-barres-499.php on Evene

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Context: Quality is better seen up at the timberline than here obscured by smoky windows and oceans of words, and he sees that what he is talking about can never really be accepted here because to see it one has to be free from social authority and this is an institution of social authority. Quality for sheep is what the shepherd says. And if you take a sheep and put it up at the timberline at night when the wind is roaring, that sheep will be panicked half to death and will call and call until the shepherd comes, or comes the wolf.

"A Qualified Farewell" (essay, early 1950's), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews
review of All the Myriad Ways by Larry Niven http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/remember-when-niven-was-fun, 2015
2010s