“Nihil affirmo, quaero omnia.”
Cicero, saying “I assert nothing, I examine everything” and quoted by the ever-excellent Superfluidity. I think this ought to be one’s basic intellectual posture, and when one does assert something one should not be personally attached to it. We are not our ideas.
And furthermore, any act of assertion should be preceded by scrutiny: why am I asserting this? What is my goal in proselytizing this opinion, this belief, this observation? I think most assertions are more about the asserting self than about the asserted position: the ideas are secondary, the self primary.
So many assertions can be translated: me, me, me! That includes this one.
