Bergen Evans
Bergen Evans
Bergen Baldwin Evanswas a Northwestern University professor of English, and a television host. He received a George Foster Peabody Award in 1957 for excellence in broadcasting for his CBS TV series The Last Word...
Bergen Evans quotes about
experience given until wisdom
Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.
past
We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.
memorial-day thinking doubt
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
trust men demand
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.
glitter magpies seizing
Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.
want hypothesis observation
We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.
selection
There is wisdom in the selection of wisdom....
reflection vocabulary intellectual
Many studies have established the fact that there is a high correlation between vocabulary and intelligence and that the ability to increase one's vocabulary throughout life is a sure reflection of intellectual progress.
leadership able motivated
Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.
vices virtue mere
The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.
essence witch procedures
That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.
leader way following
For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they do but marshal us the way that we are going.
writing thinking punctuation-marks
It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example of it is a misuse. Its overuse is its greatest danger, and the writer who can't resist dashes may be suspected of uncoordinated thinking.
writing skills confusion
Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill.