"A 'new thinker', when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought"
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Originality gets punctured here with a needle instead of a sword. Colby’s line isn’t anti-creativity so much as anti-posture: the “new thinker” becomes a figure of accidental innovation, someone mistaking ignorance for invention. The bite is in the phrase “when studied closely,” which flips the usual glow of intellectual celebrity into a forensic inspection. Seen up close, the brave iconoclast is just under-read.
As an educator, Colby is speaking from the classroom and the canon: he’s defending intellectual lineage in a culture that loves declaring everything a “paradigm shift.” The subtext is a warning about historical amnesia. Ideas don’t arrive as immaculate conceptions; they’re revisions, recombinations, arguments with predecessors. When you don’t know the lineage, you can’t locate your own thought inside it - which means you also can’t tell whether you’re advancing it or re-enacting an old mistake with fresh confidence.
There’s also a sly critique of audiences and institutions that reward novelty as a brand. Calling someone a “new thinker” can be less a judgment of rigor than a marketing tag: new equals disruptive, disruptive equals valuable. Colby suggests a harsher metric: literacy in what has already been attempted. The line flatters scholarship without sanctifying it; it implies that true newness is possible, but it’s rare, earned, and usually recognizable only against a wide map of prior thinking.
As an educator, Colby is speaking from the classroom and the canon: he’s defending intellectual lineage in a culture that loves declaring everything a “paradigm shift.” The subtext is a warning about historical amnesia. Ideas don’t arrive as immaculate conceptions; they’re revisions, recombinations, arguments with predecessors. When you don’t know the lineage, you can’t locate your own thought inside it - which means you also can’t tell whether you’re advancing it or re-enacting an old mistake with fresh confidence.
There’s also a sly critique of audiences and institutions that reward novelty as a brand. Calling someone a “new thinker” can be less a judgment of rigor than a marketing tag: new equals disruptive, disruptive equals valuable. Colby suggests a harsher metric: literacy in what has already been attempted. The line flatters scholarship without sanctifying it; it implies that true newness is possible, but it’s rare, earned, and usually recognizable only against a wide map of prior thinking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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