Monday, February 7, 2011

Judging Greatness

"Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them." 
Arthur Schopenhauer 

4 comments:

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  2. What a great quote. I generally do not believe that it makes sense to study history in order to understand the present. I think we have to understand the present first, and then we can possibly learn something on the past either and find elements which fit together with the present. I therefore think it is an illusion that we understand the past better than those people who were living then. But Schopenhauer points out an ecception.

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  3. Due to modern technologies of diffusion, great minds will earlier be recognized in their magnitude– yet alive. Consequently most of them can raise a cheer and win laurels and money, still being alive.
    The tragedy is, that they can´t be sure about the lastingness of their magnitude. So it is a well known practise when the great minds are busy in boosting the square around their great building.

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  4. Great flux of ideas causes congestion and holdup. Not in the internet, whose bottlenecks can be eliminated by technical solutions, but in the brains.

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