"the best things are silenced"

...I believe the editors who conduct newspaper controversies purposely select and print all the silliest letters and leave out the most sensible. As you truly say (with your lightning power of repartee) they commonly print mine. But in this, as almost everything else, modern England is turned inside out; the best things are silenced, the worst things well expressed; England is not half such a silly place as you would imagine from its most distinguished utterances. The England that is sane is silent. In the existing struggle imbecility has a sort of advantage, just as in certain forms of biological struggle there is an advantage in the smallness of the gnat or the shapelessness of the jellyfish. Competition does not merely mean the triumph of the worst; it actually means the triumph of the weakest. Private life is more patriotic than public life. Public life is meaner than private life. Nay, public life is more private than private life; common business is done in the street, but high politics is done in a corner.

-September 14, 1907, Illustrated London News