(Quoting from an interview of British historian Paul Johnson by Brian M. Carney in the March 5, 2011 Wall Street Journal): In the popular imagination, Socrates may be the first deep thinker in Western civilization, but in Mr. Johnson’s view he was also an anti-intellectual. Which is what makes him one of the good guys. “One of the categories of people I don’t like much are intellectuals,” Mr. Johnson says. “People say, ‘Oh, you’re an intellectual,’ and I say, ‘No!’ What is an intellectual? An intellectual is somebody who thinks ideas are more important than people.” (Emphasis added).
(Older quotes below]
“If reason ruled the world would history even exist?”
—From Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński
“Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while
A great wind is bearing me across the sky.”
—Anishinabe (Ojibwa) saying, as quoted in Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals by Peter Matthiessen
“The only writings that I trust are Fiction and Editorials; I know the former is a story and the later is an opinion. As for History and News… if you show me a ‘true history’ or ‘unbiased news’ then I say ‘you have just identified your own bias’”.
—Marty Cawthon
“Nature is always differentiated unity, not unified differences.”
—Alan Watts: Beyond Mythology: The Art of Godmanship
Thinking is creativity’s worst enemy…Before the heart can remember, the mind must forget.
—BYRON JANIS: “In Praise of Infidelity” (in music)
Wall Street Journal, Arts & Entertainment, January 6, 2010
[Note: Some of the below comments refer to a previous posting]
I would go one step further: evil is what happens when you take your abstraction to be more valuable than human beings. The abstraction can be a political ideology, regardless of flavour, a religion, or even that often abused concept “the market”. (I’m all for market economy, of course. But “the market” is simply the sum of all economic decisions taken by individual humans. To claim that the abstract market is right and concrete human beings are wrong, as some do, is self-contradictory.)
I fully agree with your first sentence. I guess I have be in accord with all that follows, therefore. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.