"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter"
About this Quote
Crowley’s line lands like a slap because it treats attention as a moral resource, not a casual habit. Reading the newspaper, he implies, isn’t neutral “keeping up”; it’s an active decision to crowd out anything that might actually enlarge you. The provocation is deliberately elitist, but not lazily so. He’s attacking the emerging mass-information ecosystem of the early 20th century: daily print as an assembly line of novelty, packaged opinion, and social temperature checks. “Canned chatter” is a perfect insult for journalism as industrial food - preserved, standardized, engineered to be consumed quickly and forgotten.
The intent isn’t just to sneer at the press; it’s to argue that education begins with refusal. Crowley frames discipline as subtraction: the power to say no to what is easy, loud, and socially sanctioned. That’s why “refrain” does double duty. It suggests abstinence (as if news were a vice) and restraint (as if the educated person’s first skill is impulse control). He’s pitching a kind of intellectual asceticism: treat your mind like a temple, not a marketplace.
The subtext is also self-serving in a way that makes it more interesting. Crowley, a notorious self-mythologizer and critic of bourgeois norms, positions himself against the “daily” as a badge of independence. Newspapers represent consensus reality; he champions private cultivation, esoteric depth, and chosen inputs. In an age when headlines monetize anxiety and identity, the barb still holds: the real rebellion is not hot takes, but selective silence.
The intent isn’t just to sneer at the press; it’s to argue that education begins with refusal. Crowley frames discipline as subtraction: the power to say no to what is easy, loud, and socially sanctioned. That’s why “refrain” does double duty. It suggests abstinence (as if news were a vice) and restraint (as if the educated person’s first skill is impulse control). He’s pitching a kind of intellectual asceticism: treat your mind like a temple, not a marketplace.
The subtext is also self-serving in a way that makes it more interesting. Crowley, a notorious self-mythologizer and critic of bourgeois norms, positions himself against the “daily” as a badge of independence. Newspapers represent consensus reality; he champions private cultivation, esoteric depth, and chosen inputs. In an age when headlines monetize anxiety and identity, the barb still holds: the real rebellion is not hot takes, but selective silence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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