If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant
mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast
undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does
not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job
possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is
parasitical and unneccessary.
-- Ayn Rand
Let the caveman who does not choose to accept the axiom of identity
try to present his theory without using the concept of identity or
any concept derived from it -- let the anthropoid who does not choose
to accept the existence of nouns, try to devise a language without
nouns, adjectives, or verbs -- let the witch doctor who does not
choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove
it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception -- let
the head-hunter who does not choose to accept the validity of logic,
try to prove it without logic -- let the pygmy who proclaims that a
skyscraper needs no foundation after it reaches its fiftieth story,
yank the base from under his building, not yours -- let the cannibal
who snarls that the freedom of man's mind was needed to create an
industrial civilization, but is not needed to maintain it, be given
an arrowhead and a bearskin, not a university chair of economics....
