The Pseudo-Classicist

"[Mortimer] Adler, founder of the Great Books movement, put it this way: 'Some basic truths are to be found in the great books, but many more errors will also be found there, because a plurality of errors is always to be found for every single truth.' This attitude contrasts with that of the pseudo-classicist who feels that he has entered this great conversation simply because he has obtained a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and strings a bunch of them together like wash on the line. But it is not enough simply to cite great names from the past, heedless of the great controversies (and wars) they had with one another."

(Douglas Wilson, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, p. 84)