…„She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embar­ras­sing. You ask why to a lot of thing and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl’s bet­ter off dead.“

„Yes, dead.“

„Luckily, queer ones like her don’t hap­pen often. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early. You can’t build a house wit­hout nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy poli­ti­cally, don’t give him two sides to a ques­tion to worry him; give him one. Bet­ter yet, give him none. Let him for­get there is such a thing as war. If the gover­nen­ment is inef­fi­ci­ent, topheavy, and tax-mad, bet­ter it be all those than that people worry about it. Peace, Mon­tag. Give the people con­tests they win by remem­be­ring the words to more popu­lar songs or the names of state capi­tals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non­com­bus­ti­ble data, chock them so dam­ned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuf­fed, but abso­lu­tely ‘bril­li­ant’ with infor­ma­tion. The they’ll feel they’re thin­king, they’ll get a sense of motion wit­hout moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slip­pery stuff like phi­lo­so­phy or socio­logy to tie things up with. That way lies melan­ch­oly. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back toge­ther again, and most men can, nowa­days, is hap­pier than any man who tries to slide-rule, mea­sure, and equate the uni­verse, which just won’t be mea­su­red or equa­ted wit­hout making man feel bes­tial or lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and par­ties, your acro­bats and magi­ci­ans, your dar­e­de­vils, jet cars, motor­cy­cle heli­c­op­ters, your sex and heroin, more of ever­y­thing to do with auto­ma­tic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says not­hing, if the play is hol­low, sting me with the the­re­min, loudly. I’ll think I’m respon­ding to the play when it’s only a tac­tile reac­tion to the vibra­tion. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.“

Ray Brad­bury, Fah­ren­heit 451

Fand ich ‘ne inter­es­sante Stelle.

• Ray Brad­bury — Fah­ren­heit 451 bei amazon.de