The West no longer knows Wisdom: it no longer knows the majestic silence of those who have mastered themselves, the bright calm of the Seers, the superb “solar” reality of those in whom the idea has made itself blood, life, and power. Wisdom has been supplanted by the rhetoric of “philosophy” and “culture”, the realm of professors, journalists, and sportsmen—the plan, the program, the proclamation. It has succumbed to sentimental, religious, humanitarian contamination, and the race of chatterers who run around madly exalting “becoming” and “practice”, because silence and contemplation frighten them.

~ Julius Evola, Pagan Imperialism

Which nation honors its philosophers and mathematicians, and which its sportsmen? The philosopher Auguste Comte gets a major boulevard in Paris, the football coach Don Shula gets an expressway in Miami, but I get an alley in Salemi.