2 Comments

1. Nicholas Gruen

   December 3, 2006

   Hear hear.

   Here's one of many favourite quotes.

   I am nearly fifty, and cannot in any case hope for more than a few years in which I can do my best work. I take this opportunity, therefore, of saying that I will not be drawn into discussion of what I write. Some readers may wish to convince me that it is all nonsense. I know how they would do it; I could invent their criticisms for myself. Some may wish to show me that on this or that detail I am wrong. Perhaps I am; if they are in a position to prove it, let them write ot about me but about the subject, showing that they can write about it better than I can; and I will read them gladly. And if there are any who think my work good, let them show their approval of it by attention to their own. So, perhaps I may escape otherwise than by death the last humiliation of an aged scholar, when his juniors conspire to print a volume of essays and offer it to him as a sign that they now consider him senile.

   A stroppy bastard, but a very simple and powerful philosopher I reckon. He died just a few years after writing this piece which is in his autobiography. He knew he was sick - from memory a weak heart. Not unlike Keynes in that respect. And also a polymath.

2. Ken Parish

   December 3, 2006

   I thought you meant that bloke who got a double century for the Poms yesterday.