Today, to celebrate the fact that I finally finished it a couple of weeks ago (and was rather less than overwhelmed by it!), the 'thought' comes from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (p.618 of the Penguin Classics translation):
The fear of aesthetics is the first symptom of powerlessness
This one goes out to all those of you out there who think that the form in which you make a statement matters more than the importance of what you have to say. You know who you are.