Rationality Quotes September 2012

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Can you specify more about what parts of the quote are confusing?

This one isn't that bad. (For utter, words-don't-work-that-way confusion, see Debord. Or good ol' Hegel.)

Whatever its political, pedagogical, cultural content, the plan is always to get some meaning across,

That bit is straightforward.

to keep the masses within reason;

"The masses" has a standard denotation but various connotations. Freddy Nietzsche talks about enthusiastic young people, which is more specific.

What's "to keep within reason"? What this evokes is talking someone down, preventing outbursts. Applied to the masses, doe... (read more)