Prescient Quotations

Here are a couple of quotations from Philip Melanchthon - written some 500 years ago - that sound like they could have been written today. The more things change . . . as they say . . .

"Uneducated men hate literature and want it destroyed, hoping that thereby they can hide their own ignorance better."

"We can see that it happens generally that the best things are held in utmost contempt and, on the other hand, that the worst things are made great."

"Do we not see how our century is afflicted more than anything else by the fact that the mighty cannot bear free speech, and not even any thought of freedom?"

And a little story I liked . . .

"What happens to the Muses and the study of them now is the same as Strabo reports as having once happened in Iassus to a singer accompanying himself on the cithara. When he was singing learnedly and sweetly in the theatre there and the Iassians were listening to him, as soon as a bell rang (which was the sign for the sale of fish on offer), immediately all left the singer behind and scattered to buy fish, with the exception of one somewhat deaf man who alone remained, not having heard the sound of the bell. The singer thereupon turned to him and said: "I am immensely grateful to you - because of the enthusiasm for music as well as because of the honour to me - for not dashing out immediately at the ringing of the bell, like all the others, in order to buy fish." The man said: "What do you say? Has the bell rung yet then?" When the singer confirmed this, he said: "Good luck to you," rose and forthwith he, too, ran out to buy fish. The singer was abandoned alone, and in a city of that size he did not find anyone who cared more for music than for rotten fish."

Any application to today . . . ?  :-)