Privacy and rationality

Two nice quotes from this week’s New York Review. First, Clive James on Philip Larkin:

Always averse to the requirements of celebrity, he didn’t find out enough about them, and never realised that beyond a certain point of fame you not only don’t have a private life any more, you never had one.

And from the Mughal Emperor Akbar:

The pursuit of reason and rejection of traditionalism are so brilliantly obvious as to be above the need of argument. If traditionalism were proper, the prophets would merely have followed their own elders.