The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.
Ernest Gellner
The production of obscurity ...
Quotes from the same author
A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.
Ernest Gellner
Academic environments are generally characterised by the presence of peole who claim to understand more than in fact they do. Linguistic Philosophy has produced a great revolution, generating people who claim not to understand when in fact they do. Some achieve great virtuosity at it. Any beginner in philosophy can manage not to understand, say, Hegel, but I have heard people who were so advanced that they knew how not to understand writers of such limpid clarity as Bertrand Russell or A.J. Ayer.
Ernest Gellner
I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.
Ernest Gellner
America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it.
Ernest Gellner
