For the public always seizes on what is new, and has naturally a greater proneness to what is perverse and dull as akin to itself.
 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation

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Author Arthur Schopenhauer
Source The World as Will and Representation
Topic public
Date 1819
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38427/38427-h/38427-h.html

Context

“Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnæ. It is worthy of serious consideration what an amount of time—both their own and other people's—and paper is lost by this swarm of mediocre poets, and how injurious is their influence. For the public always seizes on what is new, and has naturally a greater proneness to what is perverse and dull as akin to itself. Therefore these works of the mediocre poets draw it away and hold it back from the true masterpieces and the education they afford, and thus working in direct antagonism to the benign influence of genius, they ruin taste more and more, and retard the progress of the age.” source