“The central fact for me is, I think, that the [role of the] intellectual... cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug.” PeopleThinkingFactsGovernmentRolesIssuesProduceIntellectualRaisesForgottenCorporationsDogmaEmbarrassingOrthodoxyRaison D'etreEmbarrassing Questions Author:Edward Said
“There's a lot we should be able to learn from history. And yet history proves that we never do. In fact, the main lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. This makes us look so stupid that few people care to read it. They'd rather not be reminded. Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It's very embarrassing.” PeopleShouldLooksLongBookFactsCareAbleNamesMistakeStupidLessonsProveListsEmbarrassingHistory BooksGood History Book:The Big Picture: An American Commentary Source: The Big Picture: An American Commentary
“It certainly is an embarrassing fact, then, for certain classical scholars to have to face, that the Platonic Academy continued to function in Athens for over nine hundred years.” YearsFactsFacesCertainHundredFunctionNineScholarEmbarrassingAcademyAthensPlatonic Author:Robert K. G. Temple