to the old, white, rich right-wing men dinosaurs encouraging humanity to play possum with reality:
“I like the scientific spirit–the holding off, the being sure but not too sure the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine–it always keeps the way beyond open–always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake–after a wrong guess.”
From the newly published Walt Whitman Speaks, previewed in The New York Review of Books.