“Take the superlative, which has become the placebo of mass journalism, written and oral. The superlative seems transparent and harmless. How does it corrupt? By the insidious suggestion, which is soon common belief, that among all the things that fill the world the only notable specimens are six: the first, the last, the largest, the smallest, the oldest, and the youngest, Journalistic art consists in making every story a vehicle for one of these mental aphrodisiacs… But surely everybody takes this with a grain of salt? Not at all: there is not enough salt on earth. To the unprotected mind, even though ‘advanced,” only the superlative deserves attention. One observer has with good reason called this ‘The Paragon Complex.'” (Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect)

“When science shall have assumed her true relation to the field of human culture we shall all be happier. To-day science knows that the silkworm must be fed on the leaves of the mulberry tree, but does not know that the soul of man must be fed on the Bible and the Greek classics. Science knows that a queen bee can be produced by care and feeding, but does not as yet know that every man who has had a little Greek and Latin in his youth belongs to a different species from the ignorant man. No matter how little it may have been, it reclassifies him. There is more kinship between that man and a great scholar than there is between the same man and some one who has had no classics at all: he breathes from a different part of his anatomy. Drop the classics from education? Ask rather, Why not drop education? For the classics are education. We cannot draw a line and say, ‘Here we start.’ The facts are the other way. We started long ago, and our very life depends upon keeping alive all that we have thought and felt during our history. If the continuity is taken from us, we shall relapse.” (John Jay Chapman, 1910, Learning and Other Essays )