&#62; Author: If you want to learn Python's real mantra, try typing "import this" in the interactive shell. One of the lines you'll read is "Explicit is better than implicit," which should give you a clue as to why there is no "implied this" in Python.<p>Among other things being that he's calling it <i>this</i> which means he's breaking loose convention and making other Python programmers who read his code say, at least briefly "Huh? This?".<p>That said, one point of huge value to the explicit <i>self</i> variable is that it makes it INCREDIBLY easy at any given time to glance at a method and say "Oh, this method attached to this object IS|ISNT an instance method".