Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But … - J. M. Coetzee

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The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete.

J. M. Coetzee

Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task.

Aesopian, Censor, Diverting, Games, Intelligent, Past

Same Author Quotes

(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

Simple, Generosity, Guilt, Fear, Let

Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them.

Holocaust, Poultry, Purpose, Rats, Rivals, Self

Children all over the world consort quite naturally with animals. They don't see any dividing line. That is something they have to be taught, just as they have to be taught it is all right to kill and eat them.

Children, Animal, Pet, Taught, Consort

The highest type of intelligence, says Aristotle, manifests itself in an ability to see connections where no one has seen them before, that is, to think analogically.

Thinking, Connections, Type, Ability, Aristotle

Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.

Action, Crafts, Deception, Opponent, Says, Use