A letter to Noam Chomsky

Dear professor Chomsky,

You don't know me. And probably never will.

I'm simply writing to thank you for having acted so strongly on my life and the development of my values and opinions.

By articulating your thoughts so clearly and by documenting your arguments with such numerous sources, you have contributed not only to my knowledge, but also to the way I think, to what my mind now requires to formulate an opinion or consider an argument.

Your ease for writing puts mine to shame. I have read some of your phrases over and over, savouring their harmonious beauty, complexity and clarity. Like diamonds.

You have introduced me to other great minds and their work. Foucault, Dewey and Russell among others. You feed my hunger for knowledge and my research in my own nature, the one of my peers and my attempt at comprehending the complex world I happened in.

You have acted as a philosophical counterweight, bringing arguments from every side, flipping the issues upside down and inside out, reinforcing my comprehension at every step. You have rooted the thoughts you present in history, bringing a perspective that unites the modern thought to humans from all ages and origins, saving what little faith in Mankind I have left.

You make me smile with your occasional witty sarcasm and force me, every now and then, to close your books and reflect for long minutes. You voice out with awesome power some of my deepest concerns about humanity without ever resorting to dogmatism or endoctrination. And most of all, you never pretended to have an answer for everything, much less try to. You are humble and brave, intellectually honest and wholesome.

You, Sir, are an awesome man and quite an intellectual standard to look up to.

Thank you.