PolicemanPrawn

“A condition of marginality, which might seem irresponsible or flippant, frees you from having always to proceed with caution, afraid to overturn the applecart, anxious about upsetting fellow members of the same corporation.”
― Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“In a more consistent and sustained way, I think, intellectuals who are close to policy formulation and can control patronage of the kind that gives or withholds jobs, stipends, promotions tend to watch out for individuals who do not toe the line professionally and in the eyes of their superiors gradually come to exude an air of controversy and noncooperation. Understandably of course, if you want a job done—let us say that you and your team have to provide the State Department or Foreign Office with a policy paper on Bosnia by next week—you need to surround yourself with people who are loyal, share the same assumptions, speak the same language. I have always felt that for an intellectual who represents the kinds of things I have been discussing in these lectures, being in that sort of professional position, where you are principally serving and winning rewards from power, is not at all conducive to the exercise of that critical and relatively independent spirit of analysis and judgment that, from my point of view, ought to be the intellectual’s contribution. In other words, the intellectual, properly speaking, is not a functionary or an employee completely given up to the policy goals of a government or a large corporation, or even a guild of likeminded professionals. In such situations the temptations to turn off one’s moral sense, or to think entirely from within the specialty, or to curtail skepticism in favor of conformity are far too great to be trusted. Many intellectuals succumb completely to these temptations, and to some degree all of us do. No one is totally self-supporting, not even the greatest of free spirits.”
― Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“I have already suggested that as a way of maintaining relative intellectual independence, having the attitude of an amateur instead of a professional is a better course.”
― Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“It is much more immoral to claim virtue without fully living with its direct consequences.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life