waving a red flag

“The discussion of color has always brought some considerable risk, a fact that inspired a predecessor to say that waving a red flag before a bull will rouse him to anger, but any mention of color at all will send the philosopher into a rage.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from his Farbenlehre, or Theory of Color, 1808. Translated from the German by Douglas Miller, 1988.

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