There is a form of social illness whose sufferers can not only not tolerate encountering different opinions and ideas in person, but cannot bear the thought that such things might exist unencountered in the minds and conversations of others. If they can’t observe these thoughts and aren’t party to such conversations, how can they demonstrate their moral and intellectual superiority by intervening with The Truth?
– Hadrien Laporte
Category: Hadrien Laporte Quotes
Hadrien Laporte on Circular Thinking
He says, in effect: ‘Those who are smart are good. Those who are good hold these views. Those who hold these views are smart.’
It’s a childish circular reasoning of the sort that you’d expect someone who claims to have a superior mind would have the dignity to reject.
– Hadrien Laporte
Hadrien Laporte on Academic Corruption
Just as public funding corrupts research universities, so too can funding from non-governmental sources when it represents a sizeable and non-anonymized portion of a given department’s funding. Funding from large businesses, wealthy individuals, or deep-pocketed foundations, if it accounts for a sufficiently large percent of the school’s or department’s activities, will procure the results these want. ‘Focused research’ will find what is paid for, and should those findings reflect the the truth that scientific and academic institutions claim to seek, it is purely accidental.
— Hadrien Laporte