11.34 On Friday & Saturday we walked to museum & art galleries in this beautiful city. I'm not sure how much our experience of the Square Mile & West End can be extrapolated to the areas & suburbs of the city. But here, it's good.
Quote of the morning, from Edward O. Wilson's "Consilience" (p.2):
"The first step to wisdom, as the Chinese say, is getting things by their right names."
This is my view, as against that of Willem de Kooning (quoted by Robert Cozzolino in the DGM Guestbook for June 11th.): "It is disastrous to name ourselves".
13.46 Continuing quotes:
1. (Queen Victoria to her daughter Princess Louise, on her intending to register as a sculpture student at the RCA):
"You must beware of artists - they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous".
2. (Edward Chancellor on behaviour on stock markets, FT July 24/25th. 1999):
"Freud identified the key features of a crowd mentality: invincibility, irresponsibility, impetuosity, contagion, changeability, suggestibility, collective hallucination and intellectual inferiority."
"In popular culture, our musicians sing to us in our own voice.
In mass culture they shout what we want to hear."
