I. F. Stone - Retirement, Classical Scholarship and Death

Retirement, Classical Scholarship and Death

In 1971, angina pectoris forced Stone to cease publication of the Weekly. After his retirement, he decided to return to the University of Pennsylvania, whence he had dropped out years before and earn a bachelor's degree in Classical Languages. Stone successfully learned ancient Greek and wrote a book about the prosecution and death of Socrates, The Trial of Socrates, in which he argued that Socrates wanted to be sentenced to death in order to shame Athenian democracy, which he despised.

In 1970 Stone received the George Polk Award, and in 1976 he received the Conscience-in-Media Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Stone died of a heart attack in 1989 in Boston.

Read more about this topic:  I. F. Stone

Famous quotes containing the words classical, scholarship and/or death:

    Classical art, in a word, stands for form; romantic art for content. The romantic artist expects people to ask, What has he got to say? The classical artist expects them to ask, How does he say it?
    —R.G. (Robin George)

    The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    To die, to sleep—
    No more, and by a sleep to say we end
    The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
    That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
    Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.
    To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
    Must give us pause.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)