Marco

“The intellectual cannot operate at room temperature.”
― Eric Hoffer, First Things, Last Things

“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many divergences of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink the fact of this temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making a more sentimental or more hardhearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of the opposite temper to be out of key with the world’s character, and in his heart he considers them incompetent and “not in it,” in the philosophic business, even though they may far excel him in dialectical ability. (James 1975a, p. 11)1”
― Richard J. Bernstein, The Pragmatic Turn

“Having a talent is not enough; one also requires your permission for it--right, my friends?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“What you don’t know has power over you; knowing it brings it under your control, and makes it subject to your choice. Ignorance makes real choice impossible.”
― Abraham H. Maslow