Larry Sanger over Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt
Larry Sanger is Amerikaans
filosoof en vooral "epistemologist", naar eigen zeggen medeoprichter van
Wikipedia, waarmee hij stopte uit onvrede met de kwaliteit van de
artikelen, werd in september 2011 geïnterviewd door Dan Schneider [cf.].
Toen de interviewer een vraag eindigde met "To quote Spinoza:
‘All things excellent are both difficult and rare,’"
antwoordde Sanger:
"One of my most favorite quotes in all of philosophy, although I thought it was more to the effect that all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare, meaning, I guess, that the reason that excellent things are rare is that they are difficult—or more precisely, the rareness of excellent things is a function of their difficulty. As I recall (I could have this completely wrong), Spinoza’s point was that to do something excellently, one must first have humility, because it is rare really to succeed, and one must also work especially hard if one is to have any hope of achieving it. Spinoza, by the way, was a great one for the moral and psychological importance of freedom."
