Clive James Quotes
In between the Queen and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, sat Tony Richardson, looking very calm. Later on it emerged that this was because, having not been apprised of the placement until he was about to sit down, he had died of fright. To have expired was to be fortunate.
James, Clive. The Blaze of Obscurity. Picador, 2009.
Although he was the first Western philosopher to emerge from the dark ages, he was one of the great advocates for freedom of speech and freedom of thought. He not only was publicly critical of many authority figures of the day, but he refused Pope Nicholas I’s orders to submit his work to Church censorship. He was supported by King Charles nonetheless, but various church councils condemned many of his writings. Ironically, one of his works that caused so much criticism was a defense of one of the views of Hincmar, the cleric who he attacked in the quotation. The radical notion was that the destiny of an individual is not totally dependent upon God, but that man has been given free will and that has some part in determining salvation.
The fear of nuclear war was a major emotion for most people in the world at the time. Hard liners like Goldwater were concerned that that fear would undermine support for greater nuclear development and deployment in America and maintaining opposition to nuclear test ban treaties that were under discussion. He made the mistake however of referring to the fear as “craven”, morally denigrating any American who might be in fear of nuclear war, which included just about everyone. So the Democrats took this quotation and used it in their battery of TV ads showing Goldwater as not only a hard liner, but one who had no empathy or understanding for a normal person who feared a nuclear conflict—one who was not to be trusted with the Presidency. Had Goldwater simply argued that legitimate and reasonable fear of nuclear conflict might make the nation too timid and perhaps inadvertently increase the likelihood of nuclear disaster by not standing up to the Russians, he may not have had the resentment from most people who thought Goldwater was calling their fears “craven”.
Clive James AO CBE FRSL was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster and writer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019. He began his career specialising in literary criticism before becoming television critic for The Observer in 1972, where he made his name for his wry, deadpan humour.
