John Simon Quotes
The pressure on language to deteriorate does not come merely from below, from the "democratic" lev-elers. It comes also from above, from the fancy jar-gonmongers, idle game players, fashionable coteries for second-rate intellectuals.
Simon, John. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline. Clarkson N. Potter, 1980.
He was referring to Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin; [January 3, 1901 – January 19, 1985) was political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna, at which he became an associate professor of political science at the Faculty of Law. In 1938 he and his wife fled from the Nazi forces which had entered Vienna, and emigrated to the United States, where they became citizens in 1944. He spent most of his academic career at the University of Notre Dame, Louisiana State University, the University of Munich and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He was a very elitist intellectual who was a favorite of Conservatives. A number of his accomplished students, however were very egalitarian and were active liberals and populists. America is one of the few countries and cultures in the world where political, religious and philosophical views do not get passed from one generation to the next by family and teachers. America's freedom has been not only legal freedom but has stimulated cultural freedom as well, sometimes to the distress of older generations who want their values and ideas preserved and transmitted through the c=generations.
John Ivan Simon was an American author and literary, theater, and film critic.