at court gave rise to futile speculation and great heated babbling concerning matters steeped in cant and helpless superstition and I was in no way esteemed for my ability to speak of knowledge learned by observation, so I kept my peace.
There were odd times when forced by confrontation or command to express my own opinion I thrust myself upon them in no uncertain manner, and much to their dismay, though I feared such times with all my heart and soul.
For often the discoveries I had made about our world would not find words enough to describe them and I would hang in open sentence while all about men would take me for an idiot.
The more I spoke the more I sensed my isolation.
The minds of men shut down on simple truth or they talk instead of "higher science " as though it were untouchable to common mortals and governed by the stars.
If I soiled my hands in experimentation I was treated with contempt as one who dabble in lower science.
Had I to accept to accept their view as a beggar who
holds out his hand to receive a piece of stale-bread ?
Was it not honourable to find oneself by sweat of brow and observation that there is only ONE science which Nature herself practices inside dark caves & in the breasts of nightingales alike ?
She abhors the vacuum which she would have found inside their books if not inside their heads."
Ralph Steadman after Leonardo in I LEONARDO…
-- what makes us American -- is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" -- (cheers, applause) -- "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."…
asked to face my own ego by those who were nearest and dearest to me, I resisted. And I often made their lives difficult as a result.
Andrew Cohen - June 26th 2013
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