Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value.

"Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

"I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was. Even the mass media placed a greater emphasis on presenting a broad range of human achievement. "


from National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia's
commencement speech to the Class of 2007
at Stanford University, his alma mater

1 comment:

Frankly, my dear, ... said...

That 'price' and 'value' are not necessarily synonyms is shown by the fact that 'priceless' and 'valueless' are antonyms.