“The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth at the end. Unable to see a joke, insensible to irony, it has, in a word, been badly brought up. It has not yet learned that in a decent book, as in decent society, open invective can have no place; that our present-day civilisation has invented a keener weapon, none the less deadly for being almost invisible, which, under the cloak of flattery, strikes with sure and irresistible effect.”

— Mikhail Lermontov , book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 24, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable u…" by Mikhail Lermontov?

Mikhail Lermontov 34

Russian writer, poet and painter 1814–1841

Related quotes

“The menace of communism in this country will remain a menace until the American people make themselves aware of the techniques of communism. No one who truly understands what it really is can be taken in by it. Yet the individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.”

J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972) American law enforcement officer and first director of the FBI

The Elks Magazine (August 1956).

“From its earliest days, science has been embedded in society, there has been a continuous learning process in society as a whole, based on day to day experiences and this can become the body of the knowledge from which applications and understanding have grown. … Everything on earth has to function in harmony as a system, and it is only in such a system that humanity can flourish.”

Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon (1928–2016) Indian physicist

in Impact of Advances in science and new technologies on society http://www.here-now4u.de/eng/impact_of_advances_in_science_.htm, 1998.

“Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.”

Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) American electrical engineer and science administrator

Source: Science is Not Enough (1967), Ch. X : The Search for Understanding, p. 191

“There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man
Context: There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.

“The essential fact of our existence, perhaps the only fact of our existence – our own thought and perception is ruled off-side by the science it has invented. Science looks at the universe, doesn’t see itself there, doesn’t see mind there, so you have a world in which mind has no place.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: Mind has come up with this brilliant way of looking at the world — science — but it can’t look at itself. Science has no place for the mind. The whole of our science is based upon empirical, repeatable experiments. Whereas thought is not in that category, you can’t take thought into a laboratory. The essential fact of our existence, perhaps the only fact of our existence – our own thought and perception is ruled off-side by the science it has invented. Science looks at the universe, doesn’t see itself there, doesn’t see mind there, so you have a world in which mind has no place. We are still no nearer to coming to terms with the actual dynamics of what consciousness is.