The human mind does not work at its best in isolation. There are times when the creative thinker, in order to function most perfectly, must seek solitude, but such solitude is valuable only because it is not continuous. Thought may be developed in solitude, but, in normal experience, it is not aroused except in community. Though we speak much of self-reliance, the truth is that we need each other, not only in the application of ideas, but even more in the inception of ideas; for, though minds are stimulated in various ways, their chief source of stimulation is other minds. The intellectual life grows in a variety of ways, but its most nourishing soil is that of a fellowship of minds.

Elton Trueblood in The Idea of a College