Thursday, 8 October 2015

Pipes and principles


"We must learn to honor excellence in every socially accepted human activity, however humble the activity, and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

John W. Gardner, author (1912-2002)
 
By on
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Avis sur la chose en question
Feedback on the thing in question

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Fragment #23

Shot down like a deer in the dark lying dead, the wound soon a door for dirt dwellers, bugs, birds and boars, to feed on my dull, rancid ca...

  • Righting the wrong and quoting the misquote
    There's a thread on Facebook and all over the Internet that goes: "Shakespeare said: I always feel happy. You know why? Because I...
  • Joke in the midst of the fray
    "Don't worry, for $99m, I've got all the time in the world." Auctioneer and Sotheby's head of modern art Tobias Me...
  • Snakes and Spiders
    On my way to work, on one of the old stairways going down to the Loire (the one nearer the St Symphorien bridge), I came across this bab...