We don’t want to become old, rich and useless
To think, it seems to me, is to hold an idea long enough to unlock and shape its power in the varied contexts of shared human knowledge.
Generative ideas emerge from joint thinking, from significant conversations, and from sustained, shared struggles to achieve new insights from partners in thought.
Language is double-edged; through words a fuller view of reality emerges, but words can also serve to fragment reality.
Thinking. . . is a soundless dialogue, it is the weaving of patterns, it is a search for meaning. The activity of thought contributes to and shapes all that is specifically human.
One of the major challenges facing creative individuals is that of building upon the continuity of human knowledge while achieving novel insights. . . . On the one hand, to intensify an inquiry and develop a sense of commitment to a creative life, the learner needs models, teachers, and collaborators. On the other hand, the individual, while building upon the past, needs to transform it, and thus broaden his or her choices.
Generosity is, by definition, disinterested.
Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.
There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.
Growing up in Hollywood meant there were a lot of film stars' kids at my school - but no conspicuous wealth. It wasn't cool to show off that you had money.