I became uncomfortably aware that Mensans, however high their paper IQ might be, were likely to be as irrational as anyone else. Many of them believed themselves to be part of a “superior” group that ought to rule the world, and despised non-Mensans as inferiors. Naturally, they tended to be right-wing conservatives, and I generally feel terribly out of sympathy with such views.
There they gave me a hefty shot of morphine, and in a little while the pain left. More than the pain left. All my troubles, all my concerns, all my worries left. I lay there, I remember, facing the wall, in complete peace. It wasn’t euphoria; it was better than euphoria; it was quiet, calm nirvana. I didn’t feel bored. I didn’t have to think. I just lay there at rest. Neither before nor since have I ever felt so free of all the endless indignities of life.
Military mind remains unparalleled as a vehicle of creative stupidity.
This particular thesis was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who … told me that all theories are proven wrong in time. … My answer to him was, ‘John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was [perfectly] spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.’ The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are absolute; that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong. However, I don’t think that’s so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts.
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.