“If an idea attracts me for a time I ask it to dinner, possibly introduce it to my friends, & we all have a little drink together. But I’m not married to the damned thing. I know that other people are making merry with their friends in the next house & the next street. It is the height of presumption to think that one’s own ideas have a peculiar hall-mark; that they are sacrosanct & privileged.” ~ Ernest Steeksma

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  1. ghislain31

    Ideas, be they innate, abstract or concrete, are fodder for the intellect to meditate on them, test them, fight with them and finally rejects them or make them one’s own. So I find the first sentence of the quote not only very cleaver but right to the point.
    Also “But I’m not married to the …next street”, I understand as a hyperbolic way of saying that he keeps his mind open to other’s analysis of the same ideas. Obviously the search for truth is a continuum in anybody’s life time.
    However, I have difficulty agreeing with the last sentence of that quote.
    One’s ideas, by nature (should I even use the word osmosis) have a peculiar hall-mark. Being aware of this fact is not presumptuous but on the contrary, can be very helpful in acquiring proper humility.
    If by “sacrosanct & privileged” I understand one’s idea being above and beyond criticism, then it is a repetition of his second idea.

    The nature of this quote then tells me that Ernest Steeksma would welcome any critique of his own quote.

    After reading that quote, I must hasten to assert that ‘ideas’ are the means by which we know reality. Let’s not jump to the conclusion that ‘ideas’ being relative to the knower, all reality is relative.

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