Quotation for Today: The Defeat of Knowledge and Wisdom

A nation getting overrun by ignorance and idiocy is the theme of the quotation for today.

"Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise .... ___________________________The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit."

Charles Simic

Charles Simic is a poet, essayist, and translator, and he has published some twenty collections of poetry, six books of essays, a memoir, and numerous translations. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Recent works by Simic include Voice at 3 a.m., a selection of later and new poems; Master of Disguises, new poems; and Confessions of a Poet Laureate, a collection of short essays that was published by New York Review Books as an e-book original. In 2007, Simic was appointed the fifteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. 


Simic, Charles. "NYR Blog: Age of Ignorance." The New York Review of Books 20 March, 2012.