Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 127

Information Herd Immunity

Some ideas arrive wearing uniforms. Information Herd Immunity arrives in a kurta — plain, comfortable, and ready for work.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

In every examination hall there are two kinds of silence: the silence of those who prepared, and the silence of those who are preparing excuses. The room can hear the difference.

Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. Carry it lightly. Ideas, like umbrellas, are useful only when actually opened.