Hooray! This blog is now 15 years old.
Time to stretch and reflect. Quoting others can be fun ...
“There is more trouble in interpreting interpretations than in interpreting the things themselves, and there are more books on books than on any other subject. We do nothing but write comments on one another. The whole world is swarming with commentaries; of authors there is a great dearth.”
Montaigne, Essays, Book 3 Chapter 13, On Experience.
“... much reading robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and ... the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to pick up a book every time you have a free moment. The practice of doing this is the reason erudition makes most men duller and sillier than they are by nature and robs their writings of all effectiveness: they are in Pope’s words 'For ever reading, never to be read.'”
Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, “On Thinking for Yourself”.
As an aside, in this week which marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of experiments in which nitrogen nuclei were split by alpha particles, one’s thoughts turn to Lord Rutherford. Catch a glimpse of the unconscious sexism and intellectual elitism of my fellow Nelson College alumnus ...
“An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid”
Ernest Rutherford, quoted by GJ Whitrow, Einstein, the Man and His Achievements p 42.
But returning to law:
“... as a means of improving one’s own position and popularity, it remains true that there is nothing so effective as to defend someone in the courts, and provide assistance in that field generally. One of the many excellent customs of our ancestors was their invariably respectful treatment of experts in the interpretation of our excellent law.”
Cicero, On Duties, Book 2.
