New Feature! To kick off 2010, I am adding the ability for readers to write comments at the bottom of each idea. If you agree or disagree with the idea or my interpretation of it, you will now be able to have your voice heard.
This idea is from The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli, published in 1532. This was a highly influential book that continues to shape political and social thought to this day. Read my mini-review and overall impressions.
This idea is from The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli, published in 1532. This was a highly influential book that continues to shape political and social thought to this day. Read my mini-review and overall impressions.
I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity.
A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.
A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.
~Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
It is remarkable just how often this refrain keeps coming up. Nearly all great men attribute their success to their study of other great men. As Issac Newton famously uttered: "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." And he wasn't the first to say this. It was a phrase that he borrowed from other great men before him. See the wikipedia article for the history of the phrase.
Any great man you can think of: Darwin, Freud, Jung, Einstein, Shakespeare, Franklin, Nietzsche, Descartes, Kant - without exception they were students of the great men throughout history. No one ever says that he stood on the shoulders of his contemporaries. If average contemporary men are your role models, it will be extremely difficult to rise to much higher heights than they have.
The vast majority of scientists and philosophers are vermin. A great man comes along every so often with a new idea, and then for decades or centuries hordes of scientists endlessly swarm around that idea like flies, endlessly batting around the same ideas amongst themselves (distorting it in the process). They are vampires on the progress of humanity, using the institution of science as a means for their own upward social mobility, with no sincere desire to actually contribute to that progress.
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