A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 217

I submit, then, that it is indisputably easier to be Dogmatic than Democratic, especially about issues that are both vexed and highly charged. I submit further that the issues surrounding “correctness” in contemporary usage are both vexed and highly charged, and that the fundamental questions they involve are ones whose answers have to be literally worked out instead of merely found.

– from the essay “Authority and American Usage,” originally published in Harper’s and republished in the book Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace