And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.
Interpretation
Intellectual fulfillment comes with struggles and challenges that can lead to emotional turmoil.
Christopher Hitchens highlights the dual nature of intellectual pursuits, suggesting that the joys and rewards derived from deep thinking and understanding are inherently linked to difficult experiences such as anxiety, doubt, and even desolation. This juxtaposition implies that true intellectual gratification is not free from pain and challenge; rather, it is often through these very struggles that one gains profound insights and a deeper appreciation for knowledge.
In practice
This quote can be used as a thought-provoking introduction to a discussion on the cost of intellectual endeavors.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.
He used to say to his melancholia patients: "You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription.Try to think every day how you can please someone.
I do not know what 'moss' stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge... I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school.
Borrowing knowledge of reality from all sources, taking the best from every study, Science of Mind brings together the highest enlightenment of the ages.
Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.
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