“There are two things you need for a jolly good hymn. The first is a set of words that expresses the mood or sentiment of the worshipper. The second—and perhaps even more important—is a good tune … with a simple popular melody.”

On Serbian war aims and human rights abuses during the post-Yugoslavian conlicts, and especially the Bosnian War, as quoted in (10 June 1993)
Context: It is unfortunate for all that no moral issue has ever been clearer. Any attempt to plea-bargain with outlaws and renegades will only be at the expense of honor, decency and self-respect. The Serbs, are two-dimensional people with a craving for simplicity and an ideology so basic it can be understood without effort. They need enemies, not friends, to focus their two-dimensional ideas. Life for them is a simple tune, never an orchestration, or even a pleasant harmony. Animals make use of their resources with far greater felicity than these retorted creatures, whose subscription to the human race is well in arrears.

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)
Context: The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment. Nonetheless, the human situation is so, and this is why I think that the Christian faith is right as against simple forms of secularism. That it believes that there is in man a radical freedom, and this freedom is creative but it is also destructive — and there's nothing that prevents this from being both creative and destructive. That's why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence.

Interview with Prime Minister Ehud Barak on ABC News http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches%20by%20Israeli%20leaders/2000/Interview%20with%20PM%20Barak%20on%20ABC%20News-%20This%20Week%20-%20S, September 10, 2000

1910s, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / The Importance of Being Earnest / Salomé

Simple people(who,incidentally,run this socalled world)know this(they know everything)whereas complex people—people who feel something—are very,very ignorant and really don't know anything.
"Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)

(translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018, version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Hoe gaat het met je werk, maak vooral een goed eenvoudig [en] waar dingetje.. ..ik geloof er een goed plaatsje voor te hebben. namelijk ik sprak den Heer over jou en hij drukte de wensch uit dat je hem iets goeds moet laten zien..
Quote of Mauve in his letter to painter , 1866; as cited in Archive P.A. Scheen, collectie RKD Den Haag http://delamar.bntours.nl/!mad1832-bronnen.html
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