Quotes
File
Our
lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Learning
is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.
~Aristotle
I've
learned that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the
happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.
~Anonymous
Let
this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and
riches. By the fall of drops of water,
by degrees, a pot is filled.
~The
Hitopadesa
Knowledge
is simply knowing when to laugh.
~Duane McCormick
I
respect no study and deem no study good, which results in money~making.
Seneca
"The
witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and
eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking
no prisoners."
~
To think is to differ. ~Clarence Darrow
Every
truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one
corner, and it is for you to find the other three. ~Confucius
Truth
never damages a cause that is just.
~Mohandas Gandhi
Strange
times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school.
And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and
fool.
~Plato
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our
deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our
darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves "who am I to be
brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel
insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as
children do... we were born to make manifest the Universe that is within us. And
as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do
the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others.
~Marianne Williamson
In
the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind. ~Louis Pasteur
If
they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the
answers. –Thomas Pynchon
It's
not my place to run the train, the whistle I cannot blow.
It's not my place to say how far the train's allowed to go.
It's not my place to shoot off steam, nor even clang the bell.
But let the damn thing jump the track and see who catches hell.
You
can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can't count the number of
apples in a seed.
Why
you? Because the world will end if you don't act. You are the citizen of a
flawed but actual democracy. Citizens are not actually capable of not
acting....Your life is married to the political beyond the possibility of
divorcement.
You are always an agent. When you don't act, you act. When you don't vote, you
vote. When you accept the loony logic of some of the left that there is no
political value in supporting the lesser of two evils, you open the door to the
greater evil.
Tony
Kushner, Commencement Speech at
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody else is spouting, or
else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from
~Noam
Chomsky
The
best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. ~Dr. Linus Pauling
It
does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority,
keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
Samuel Adams
There's no national glue holding us together because
somebody put too much pluribus in the unum.
~
A
problem worthy of attacks
Proves
its worth by hitting back.
~Paul
Erdos
“Whenever
you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”
~
Mark Twain
Teachers
should be able to teach subjects, not manuals merely. ~ Horace Mann
Those
who trust us educate us. ~ George Eliot
"Say
what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the
capacity for it terrifying."
~ Sir
Thomas More
I
AM NOT IN COMPLIANCE
~ George
Carlin
The
fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is
not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of
mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
~Bertrand Russell
"Who
cares what you think?"
~
President George W. Bush,
"To
live is to war with trolls."
~ Ibsen
"I
don't have faith that the truth will prevail if it becomes known, but we have
no alternative to proceeding on that assumption, whatever its credibility may
be."
~ Noam
Chomsky
"He
who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has
been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would
suffice."
~
Albert Einstein
It
is when the gods hate a man with uncommon abhorrence that they drive him into
the profession of a school~master
~Seneca
Lasting
change does not happen overnight. Lasting change happens in infinitesimal
increments: a day, an hour, a minute, a heartbeat at a time.
~
Sarah Ban Breathnach
I
respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
~
Wilson Mizner
Any
intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius ~ and a lot of
courage – to move in the opposite direction. ~E. F. Schumacher
Americans worship creativity the way they worship
physical beauty ~ as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.
~
"Good
teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching
comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher." ~Parker Palmer
"What
I'm asking people to do is simply this: In your own way, in your own life,
every day, you are confronted with a piece of data. Don't just eat it up. Just
think about it for a minute. You have the right to process your own information
based on the equipment that you were born with. That's your right. That's real
freedom. You have the right to make up your own mind. Now, if you choose to
numb yourself, and to be bamboozled, you have the right to be bamboozled. But
in your state of bamboozlement, you do not have the right to be a liability,
because of your self~imposed ignorance, on other
people who might want to do things the right way. If you voluntarily choose to
be a numbskull, for whatever reason you have chosen it, that's fine. You have
the right to be stupid, but you don't have the right to harm other people as a
result of your stupidity. And you don't have the right to legislate your
stupidity into existence, to force it on other people who have a clearer view
of what things are."
~
Frank Zappa
"For
us, there is only the trying.
The
rest is not our business."
~T.S.
Eliot
If
we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system. –Ashleigh Brilliant
Be
kind to teachers; those who do not deserve your respect, may at least deserve
your pity.
–Ashleigh Brilliant
While
one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making
mistakes and becoming superior.
~Henry
C. Link
Destiny
is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be
waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
~William
What
luck for rulers, that men do not think.
~Adolf Hitler
When
the sun of knowledge stands low even dwarves throw big shadows.
~ Markus Fuchs
Learning
why an idea fails is just as important as knowing why it
works.
~
Roman Szpur
I
never taught language for the purpose of teaching it; but
invariably used language as a medium for the communication of
thought; thus the learning of language was coincident with the
acquisition of knowledge.
~
Annie Sullivan
Play
is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious
learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really
the
work of childhood.
~
Fred Rogers
Genius
is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
~E.B. White
Life
is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
~
The
first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open.
~Günter Grass
Obstacles
cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a
star does not change his mind.
~Leonardo
Da Vinci
Beyond
a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers
increase... the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the
system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
~Frank Herbert
I
must create a system, or be enslav'd by another
man's.
~William
Blake
Education
can be dangerous. It is very difficult to make it not dangerous. In
fact, it is almost impossible. ~Robert M. Hutchins
What
is to give light must endure burning.
~Viktor
Frankl
When
small men cast long shadows the sun is going down.
~Venita Cravens
To
escape criticism ~ Do nothing, say nothing, be
nothing.
~Elbert
Hubbard
We
are the music makers,
And we are the dreamer of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea~breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World~losers and world~forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
~Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
The
most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she
transcends accepted educational methods.
~Margaret Mead
No hay nada más fecundo que la ignorancia
consciente de sí misma.
~José Ortega y Gasset
The
first idea that the child must acquire in order to be actively disciplined is
that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies
in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with
activity.
~María Montessori
It
is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so
seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather than the
hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the
teaching of the young.
~Bertrand Russell
It
requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
~Alfred
North Whitehead
All
advanced thinkers, skeptical or otherwise, are apt to be intolerant, in the
past and also now. On the whole, tolerance is more often found in connection
with a genial orthodoxy.
~Alfred
North Whitehead
Imagination
is a contagious disease. It cannot be measured by the yard, or weighed by the
pound, and then delivered to the students by members of the faculty. It can
only be communicated by a faculty whose members themselves wear their learning
with imagination.
~Alfred
North Whitehead
Too
many apples from the tree of systematized knowledge lead to the fall of
progress.
~Alfred
North Whitehead
You
may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is
an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the
structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has
peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing
it.
~Alfred
North Whitehead
The
students are alive, and the purpose of education is to stimulate and guide
their self~development. It follows as a corollary
from this premise, that the teachers also should be alive with living thoughts.
~Alfred
North Whitehead
Teach
Good, Fight Hard, Grow Love
~Rich
Gibson
Education
is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
~G.K. Chesterton
The
greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say,
"The children are now working as if I did not exist."
~Maria
Montessori
Education
is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands
and at whom it is aimed.
~
Joseph Stalin
I
see the mind of a 5~year~old as a volcano with two vents: destructiveness and
creativeness.
~Sylvia
Ashton~Warner
Spoon
feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
~
E. M. Forster
It
is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it.
~
Aristotle
No
woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.
~Rabbi
Sofer (17th Century)
It
has been agreed that every man shall have a cow.
We give him half a cow, to be getting on with.
He doesn't know what to do with half a cow, and leaves it lying about.
This proves he didn't really want or need a cow in the
first place.
We take it away from him.
~Paraphrased
from G. K. Chesterton
You must be
true to yourself.
Strong enough to be
true to yourself.
Brave enough to be
strong enough to be
true to yourself.
Wise enough to be
brave enough to be
strong enough to
shape yourself from what
you actually are.
~Sylvia
Ashton~Warner (in Myself)
"They
do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him,
"that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the
lottery."
Old
Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening
to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know,
they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves,
nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about
'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you
know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns.
There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up
there joking with everybody."
"Some
places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing
but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young
fools."
~Shirley
Jackson
"The
leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if
they belonged to one category."
~Adolf Hitler
"Wherever
they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people."
~Heinrich Heine
The
principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new
things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done ~ men who are
creative, inventive and discoverers.
~
Jean Piaget
The
best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at
education.
~
Paul Karl Feyerabend
I
am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They
seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of
idiot who must be taught to think.
~ Anne Sullivan
The
whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain
of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
~
Bertrand Russell
Expecting
all children the same age to learn from the same materials is like expecting
all children the same age to wear the same size clothing.
~
Madeline Hunter
The
one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions.
~
Max Beerhohm
Schooling,
instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.
~
Madeleine L'Engle
If
there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no
independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some
special and constricting idea.
~
Richard Hofstadter
As
we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that
can rise to delight that~thank Heaven~nobody
is reporting in this fashion on us.
~
J.B. Priestley
It
is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
~Voltaire
Reeling
and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied,
"and then the different branches of Arithmetic ~Ambition, Distraction,
Uglification, and Derision.
~Lewis
Carroll
Fool
some one once and they'll be foolish for a day, but teach them to fool
themselves and they'll be foolish for a lifetime.
“Not
everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made
equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are
happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves
against.”
~Fahrenheit
451
To
repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it,
requires brains.
Mary Pettibone Poole, A
Glass Eye at a Keyhole, 1938
Be
it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false
resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost
the same profile as supremacy.
`
Victor Hugo
While
children's perceptions of the world and opportunities for genuine spontaneity
and creativity are being systematically eliminated from the kindergarten,
unquestioned obedience to authority and rote learning of meaningless material
are being encouraged
Harry L. Gracey, sociologist
Of
course, Behaviorism "works." So does torture. Give me a no~nonsense, down~to~earth
behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I
will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in
public.
W. H. Auden
I
think my deepest criticism of the educational system at that period [junior
high and high school], and that also applies to other periods, is that it's all
based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads;
guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he
should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult
characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on
some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those
mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it
fits him or not.
Carl Rogers
If
anything concerns me, it's the oversimplification of something as complex as
assessment. My fear is that learning is becoming standardized. Learning is
idiosyncratic. Learning and teaching is messy stuff. It doesn't fit into
bubbles.
Michele Forman, 2001 Teacher of the Year
When we
judge a man not by his car but by his conversation, not by his house but by his
books, we may have a land fit for teachers to live in.
Hilda
Neatby
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Alvin
Toffler
"Reeling
and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied (to the
question of what was taught in school), "and then the different branches
of Arithmetic ~ Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and
Derision."
Lewis
Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Whoso
would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must
not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.
~Ralph
Waldo Emerson
The
intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness.
~Ralph
Waldo Emerson
To
exploit us, they measure us. To control us, they measure us.
~Subcomandante
Marcos
Power
concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
~Frederick
Douglass
Skills~based instruction, the type to which most children of color are subjected,
tends to foster low~level uniformity and subvert
academic potential.
~Dorothy
Strickland
Teacher
preparation should never be reduced to a form of training. Rather, teacher
preparation should go beyond the technical preparation of teachers and be
rooted in the ethical formation both of selves and of history. But it is
important to be clear that I am speaking not about a restricted kind of ethics
that shows obedience only to the law of profit. On the contrary, I am speaking
of a universal human ethic, an ethic that is not afraid to condemn the kind of
ideological discourse I have just cited. Not afraid to condemn the exploitation
of labor and the manipulation that makes a rumor into truth and truth into a
mere rumor.
~Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and Civic Courage
Learning
without thought is labor lost.
~ Confucius
The
surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
~ Nietzsche
"Nothing
is more terrible than ignorance in action." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Look
around the table. If you don't see a sucker, get up, because you're the sucker.
~
The
plural of the word ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data.’ When you reason and govern from
anecdote, all you are doing is inflaming passions and skewing the debate.
~Larry
Bensky
To
sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men.
~Abraham
Lincoln
"[T]he
rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must
therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic
results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is
able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep
forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the
intellectuals."
~Josef
Goebbels
"The
receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small,
but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence, all effective
propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans
until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand
by your slogan."
~Adolf
Hitler, from Mein Kampf
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is
the exact opposite.
~Bertrand Russell
" An organization is neither conscious nor alive. Its value is instrumental
and derivative. It is not good in itself; it is good only to the extent that it
promises the good of the individals who are part of
collective whole. To give organizations precedence over persons is to
subordinate ends to means." –Aldous Huxley
"In
1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there
was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific
caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the
servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the
orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep~teaching
~ these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time
of my grandchildren.... Twenty~seven years later...I
feel a good deal less optimistic... In the West,...individual
men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But...this freedom and
even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane."
Aldous Huxley Brave
Great
is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about
truth. –Aldous Huxley
Here
the theoretical reduction of unmanageable multiplicity to comprehensible unity
becomes the practical reduction of human diversity to subhuman uniformity, of
freedom to servitude. In politics the equivalent of a fully developed
scientific theory or philosophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship. In
economics, the equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is the smoothly
running factory in which the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines.
Too
much organization transforms men and women into automata, suffocates the
creative spirit and abolishes the very possibility of freedom. –Aldous Huxley
And
that is the secret of happiness and virtue ~ liking what you've got to do. All
conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.
~ Aldous Huxley. / Brave New World
If you make people think they're thinking,
they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate
you.
~
Don Marquis
An
unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie. ~ Aldous
Huxley
"The
only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. "
~
Edmund Burke
"Not
everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be
counted. "
~
Albert Einstein
"You
need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a
dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which
our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence."
~Charles
A. Beard
It
is ironic that the
:: Richard Hofstadter: Anti~Intellectualism in American Life, 1963
::
"Intelligence
is an excellence of mind that is employed within a fairly narrow, immediate,
and predictable range... Intelligence works within the framework of limited but
clearly stated goals, and may be quick to shear away questions of thought that
do not seem to help in reaching them."
"...
Intellect, on the other hand, is the critical, creative, and contemplative side
of mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re~order,
adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes,
imagines."
Richard
Hofstadter
American
education can be praised, not to say defended, on many counts; but I believe
ours is the only system in the world vital segments of which have fallen into
the hands of people who joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to
intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least
intellectual promise.
R.
Hofstadter
There
is more to life than increasing its speed. ~Mohandas Gandhi
"Observers
of American academia have often asked with some bitterness why athletic
distinction is almost universally admired and encouraged whereas intellectual
distinction is resented. I think the resentment is in fact a kind of backhanded
tribute democracy plays to the importance of intellect in our affairs. Athletic
skill is recognized as being transient, special, and for most of us unimportant
in the serious business of life; and the tribute given the athlete is considered to be earned because he entertains. Intellect,
on the other hand, is neither entertaining (to most men) nor innocent; since
everyone sees that it can be an important and permanent advantage in life, it
creates against itself a kind of universal fraternity of commonplace
minds."
R.
Hofstadter
"If
you think you are beaten~you are.
If you think that you dare not~you don't.
If you'd like to win, but fear you can't
It's fifty to one you won't."
Heresy
is only another word for freedom of thought.
~ Graham Greene
It's
not what is poured into a student that counts, but
what is planted. ~Linda Conway
Learning
from programmed information always hides reality
behind a screen. ~Ivan Illich
Where
all think alike, no one thinks very much.
~ Walter Lippmann
A
man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
~ Oscar Wilde
Thought
control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the
fact. Many grown~ups will obstinately persist, if
only now and then, in composing small strings of sentences in their heads and
achieving at least momentary logic. This probably cannot be prevented, but we
have learned how to minimize the consequences by arranging that such grown~ups will be unable to pursue that logic very far. If
they were at home in the technology of writing, there's no telling how much
social disorder they would cause by thinking things out at length.
Our
schools have chosen to cut this danger off as close to the root as possible,
thus taking measures to preclude not only the birth of thought but its
conception. They give the pill to even the youngest children, but just to be on
the safe side, they give it to everybody else, too,
especially all would~be schoolteachers.
~ Richard Mitchell
There
are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous." Hannah ARENDT
"He
that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still."
Samuel BUTLER
"Either
you think ~ or else others have to think for you and take power from you,
pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you."
F. Scott FITZGERALD
Tender is the Night, 1934
I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my
knees, and before your Eminencies, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which
I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of
the movement of the earth."
Galileo GALILEI
"One
has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't enough policemen to
control them." Stanislaw Jerzey LEC
"No
one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. Whenever the secular arm is
called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and
not infrequently it is downright idiotic."
Henry Louis MENCKEN
"Anyone
who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising
effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair
hearing."
Eric Arthur Blair or George
ORWELL
"Ideas
are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should
we let them have ideas."
Joseph Vissarionovich
STALIN
"If
they give you lined paper, write the other way."
William Carlos WILLIAMS
"If
my answers frighten you Vincent, then you should cease asking scary questions.
Samuel L. Jackson as Jules in _Pulp Fiction
I
am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it ~ Vincent
Van Gogh
A
human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog,
conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet,
balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze new problems, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
The
funny thing about human beings is that we tend to respect the intelligence of,
and eventually to like, those who listen attentively to our ideas even if they
continue to disagree with us.
S.I. Hayakawa
"It's
good to be open~minded, but not so open that your
brains fall out." ~ Jacob Needleman
A
hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.
Everything
not forbidden is compulsory.
"To
be nobody~but~myself in a world which is doing its
best, night and day, to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." ~ E. E.
Cummings
"The
attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means
that you recognize his superiority to yourself." ~ Joseph Sobran
"Great
spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter
cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary
prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." ~ Albert
Einstein
"It
is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." ~ Albert Einstein
"If
we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are." ~ Capt.
Jean~Luc Picard
"We
shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to
arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." ~ T. S.
Eliot
The
beauty of the democratic systems of thought control, as contrasted with their
clumsy totalitarian counterparts, is that they operate by subtly establishing
on a voluntary basis~aided by the force of
nationalism and media control by substantial interests~presuppositions
that set the limits of debate, rather than by imposing beliefs with a bludgeon.
Then let the debate rage; the more lively and vigorous it is, the better the
propaganda system is served, since the presuppositions (
The
most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed ~Steve Biko
Both
read the Bible day and night~ But you read black where I read white ~William Blake
If,
however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what
the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to
"manage" public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard
view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality. ~ Noam Chomsky
If
we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t
believe in it at all. ~Noam Chomsky
It
is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.
~Noam Chomsky
Whenever
citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are
routinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies ~E.L. Doctorow
Precious
few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. ~Albert Einstein
With
the affairs of active human beings it is different. Here knowledge of truth
alone does not suffice; on the contrary this knowledge must continually be
renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of
marble which stands in the desert and is continuously threatened with burial by
the shifting sands. The hands of science must ever be at work in order that the
marble column continue everlastingly to shine in the
sun. To those serving hands mine also belong. ~Albert Einstein
Truth
is that which confirms what we already believe.
~Northrop Frye
The
accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant
economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United
States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions ~ the
private business enterprise, the Communist Party ~ that reflect the dominant
economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
How
to tell students what to look for
without telling them what to see is the
dilemma of teaching. ~Lascelles Abercrombie
Today
the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he
shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort. ~Marshall McLuhan
During
times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act ~George Orwell
Circus
dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip. But the really well~trained
dog is the one that turns his somersault when there's no whip.
~George Orwell
What
a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires ~
desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact
which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the
evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand,
he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his
instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of
myths is explained in this way ~Bertrand
Russell
It
is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably
precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to
practice neither ~Mark Twain
Every
view of things that is not strange is false. ~Paul Valéry
Let
no one believe ... that the many are so exhausted by activities dictated by the
need for earning a living, that freedom of thought is useless to them, or even
disturbing. Or that they can best be activated by the diffusion of principles
handed down from on high, while their freedom to think and to investigate is
restricted ~Wilhelm Von Humboldt
"If
ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than
the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your
counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your
chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen."
~
Samuel Adams
"You
need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a
dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which
our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
~
Charles A. Beard (1874~1948)
"Democracy
must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for
dinner."
~
James Bovard, (1994)
"The
greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well~meaning but without understanding."
Justice
Louis Brandeis (1928)
"Without
free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is
useful.... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech
than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the
life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."
~
Charles Bradlaugh ~ (English reformer ~ 1890)
Rebellion
to tyrants is obedience to God.
~ John
Bradshaw
I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and
ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings
should be tamped down whenever possible.
~
Among
a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
~
Edmund Burke ~ (British statesman ~ 1756)
All
that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
~
Edmund Burke
The
road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the
truth. ~William Jefferson Clinton
It
is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence
to
their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question
it.
~Jacob Bronowski
"They
that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety."
~
Benjamin Franklin (1755)
"Everything
that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor
in freedom."
~
Albert Einstein (1950)
"No
society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom."
Mahatma
Ghandi
"Coercion
cannot but result in chaos in the end."
~
Mahatma Ghandi
"One
who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman."
~
Mahatma Ghandi
"None
are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are
free."
~
Goethe
"Extremism
in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is
no virtue."
~
Barry Goldwater
"A
government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it
all away."
~
Barry Goldwater
"The
right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their
government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve
themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal
from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more
acceptable."
~
Ulysses S. Grant
"The
evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it."
~
John Hay
Freedom
granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is
not freedom."
~F.
A. Hayek, winner of Nobel Prize for Economics
"The
human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and
those who have no such desire."
~
Robert A. Heinlein
"We
must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God
of Hosts is all that is left to us!...Why stand we
here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so
dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me,
give me liberty or give me death!"
~
Patrick Henry
"If
you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at
all."
Jacob
Hornberger (1995)
"When
governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the
government there is tyranny."
~Thomas
Jefferson
"A
little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the
political world as storms in the physical."
~
Thomas Jefferson , letter (to James Madison, 1787)
"I
have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of man."
~
Thomas Jefferson , (1800)
"The
question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we
will be...The nation and the world are in dire need of creative
extremists."
~Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Fifty~one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian
regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic."
Erik
von Kuehnelt~Leddihn
"I
believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with
himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any
other men's rights."
~
Abraham Lincoln
"No
man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
~Abraham
Lincoln
"The
truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."
~
James Madison
"I
believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the
people by gradual and silent encroachment than by violent and sudden
usurpations." ~James Madison
What
people need and what they want
may be very different....Teachers are those
who educate the people to appreciate the
things they need. ~ Elbert Hubbard
"The
urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to
rule."
~
H. L. Mencken
"The
whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed ~ and hence
clamorous to be led to safety ~ by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
~
H.L. Mencken
"Over
himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
~
John Stuart Mill
“When
they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent.
When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don’t own a gun.
Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet.”
~
Lyle Myhr
"Just
because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't
take an interest in you."
~ Pericles (430 BC)
"The
smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights
cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
~ Ayn Rand
"There
will never be a free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize
the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power
and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
~
Henry David Thoreau
It
is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. ~Voltaire
Education
is man's going forward from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful
uncertainty. ~Kenneth G. Johnson
"The
Frank
Zappa
"Wherever
is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education.
It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to
commence tyranny in nursery."
Benjamin
Disraeli, British Prime Minister
"It
is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
~Voltaire
"Men
had better be without education than be educated by their rulers."
~
Thomas Hodgskin
"Historically,
much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and
institute social control."
~
Jack Hugh
"The
aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to
reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a
standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."
~
H.L. Mencken
"As
for money, the relationship between it and effective schools has been studied
to death. The unanimous conclusion is that there is no connection between
school funding and school performance."
~
Brookings Institution scholars John Chubb and Terry Moe, 1990
"As
we all learned from the sorry experience of state~sanctioned
bureaucracies in
~
Mayor Jerry Brown, on why he opposes unionizing
It
has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to
commence tyranny in nursery."
~
Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister
"Historically,
much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and
institute social control."
~
Jack Hugh
"The
aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to
reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a
standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality."
~
H.L. Mencken
"In
~Reverend
Martin Niemoller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by
the Gestapo in 1937.
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
Noam
Chomsky
It
is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his
brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
~ Voltaire
"...there
ought to be limits to freedom."
~ Governor George W. Bush,
"Man
is born free, and is everywhere in chains."
~ Rousseau
"First
they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win."
~ Gandhi
"Whenever
you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."
~ Mark Twain
"There
usually is an answer to any problem: simple, clean, and wrong."
~ H.L. Mencken
The
only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke
Whenever
people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
~ Oscar Wilde
It
is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
~ W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
"Everything
should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
~ Albert Einstein
"They
that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty not safety."
~ Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Always
do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
~ Mark Twain
"If
I can't dance, then I won't join your revolution."
~ Emma Goldman
Whatever
you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
~ Gandhi
You
can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
~ Jeannette Rankin
"It
is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to
solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group
destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual
impoverishment."
~Albert Einstein
I
tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for
truth; and truth rewarded me.
~ Sylvia Ashton Warner
What
is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education
is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words,
it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not
got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.
~G.K.
Chesterton
The real struggle is not
between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and
propaganda.
~ Martin Buber
Hope
isn't a choice, it's a moral obligation, a human obligation, an obligation to
the cells in your body....Hope is not naive, hope grapples endlessly with
despair. Real, vivid, powerful, thunderclap hope, like the soul, is at
home in darkness, is divided; but lose your hope and you lose your soul....Will
the world end if you act? Who can say? Will you lose your soul . . . if you
don't act, if you don't organize? I guarantee it. And you will feel really
embarrassed at your ten~year class reunion.
~ Tony
Kushner,
The
origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt. ~John Dewey
The
truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always
must be...next door to an idiot, for how can one imagine an intelligent man
engaging in so puerile an avocation?
~H. L. Mencken
It is tiresome to hear education discussed, tiresome
to educate, and tiresome to be educated.
~William Lamb, second
Viscount