I really believed more strongly when I left here than when I came that ideas matter, that evidence matters, that thinking and reasoning matter, that ideas have consequences and that in politics that means ideas lead to policies which have positive or negative effects in people’s lives. [...]
If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another. But like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning. And you are certainly open to debate the practical applications of your philosophy. There are, you might wind up making a principled agreement with someone with a different philosophy.
— Full Transcript.
“[A] true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship”
— Plato, The Republic
In the context of Plato’s larger point, his Ship of State notion can come off almost as a counterweight to what Clinton’s saying. But someone who gazes only at the stars of his personal ideology, Plato would probably agree, is just as bad as someone who never looks beyond the bickering on deck.