It is said that since the invention of the steam engine we live in a new era, an era so different from all preceding ages that the cultural tradition is no longer relevant, is in fact misleading. I submit to you that this is a rationalization, that this is a pretended reason for the education void which we now call education. The real reason, I … [ Read more ]
Author: Walter Lippmann | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society
To teach is to learn twice.
Author: Joubert | Subject: Education | Scholarship
Theoretical scientists, inching away from the safe and known, skirting the point of no return, confront nature with a free invention of the intellect. They strip the discovery down and wire it into place in the form of mathematical models or other abstractions that define the perceived relation exactly. The now-naked idea is scrutinized with as much coldness and outward lack of pity as the … [ Read more ]
Author: Edward O. Wilson | Subjects: Discoveries, Math & Science
The highest flights of the human imagination may be strangely linked to the lowest impulses of the soul.
Author: Paul A. Cantor | Subjects: Imagination, Psychology | Behavior, Soul
Life is short,
Art long,
Occasion sudden and dangerous,
Experience deceitful,
and Judgment difficult.
Author: Hippocrates | Subjects: Art, Experience, Life & Society
A young man without power or money is completely free. He has nothing, but he also has everything. He can travel, he can drift. He can make new acquaintances every day, and try to soak up the infinite variety of life. He can seduce and be seduced, start an enterprise and abandon it, join an army or flee a nation, fight to preserve an existing … [ Read more ]
Author: Mark Bowden | Subjects: Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Power
Cruelty is the tyrant’s art. He studies and embraces it. His rule is based on fear, but fear is not enough to stop everyone. Some men and women have great courage. They are willing to brave death to oppose him. But the tyrant has ways of countering even this. Among those who do not fear death, some fear torture, disgrace, or humiliation. And even those … [ Read more ]
Author: Mark Bowden | Subjects: Fear, Politics & Public Policy, Power
Severed from any viable expectation of revolution, the bold, outrageous gesture remains the true and only form of “creativity” for many people who have the wherewithal to know better (critics and pundits), and many more who do not (teenagers).
Author: Martha Bayles | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
The paradox of democracy is that it cannot tolerate intolerance.
Author: Paul A. Cantor | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The business of democrats is hope, whereas the business of dictators is results.
Author: Kai-Alexander Schlevogt | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
All inquiry, whatever its subject, has as its final object the matter of how to go about living.
Knowingness is murderous of wonder and of insight, and ultimately it does a violent disservice to that which it sought to serve.
Our most basic choice, the one that grounds all the others, is this: Do we attend closely to the business of our choices, or do … [ Read more ]
Author: Mark Kingwell | Subjects: Intelligence | Knowledge, Meaning, Personal Improvement, Philosophy
It is the curious identity of books in general that history and philosophy, invaluable though they are, cannot, by their very nature, contain novels; yet novels can contain history and philosophy. We need not quarrel about which genre is superior; all are essential to human striving. But somehow it is enchanting to think that the magic sack of make-believe, if one wills it … [ Read more ]
Author: Cynthia Ozick | Subject: Literature | Arts
If we endeavor to form our conceptions upon history and life, we remark three classes of men.
The first consists of those for whom the chief thing is the qualities of feelings. These men create art.
The second consists of the practical men who carry on the business of the world. They respect nothing but power and respect power only so far as it is exercised.
The third … [ Read more ]
Author: Rene Descartes | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Philosophy, Psychology | Behavior
The idea was put forward in 1930 by a revered poet, Sir Mohammed Iqbal.
[…]
Iqbal’s argument was like this. Islam is not only an ethical ideal; it is also a “certain kind of polity.” Religion for a Muslim is not a matter of private conscience or private practice, as Christianity can be for the man in Europe. There never was, Iqbal says, a specifically Christian polity; … [ Read more ]
Author: V.S. Naipaul | Subjects: History, Religion
A metaphor brings two separate domains into cognitive and emotional relation by using the language appropriate to one as a lens for seeing the other.
Author: Max Black | Subject: Language
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Author: Blaise Pascal | Source: Pensées | Subjects: Life & Society, Philosophy, Psychology | Behavior, Wisdom
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Author: Plato | Subjects: Life & Society, Wisdom
The softest pillow is a clear conscience.
Author: N. R. Narayana Murthy | Subject: Wisdom
If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
Author: William Morris | Subjects: Advice, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement, Wisdom
We are all visitors – even when we are home. Our time in any relationship or place is ultimately limited. We are passing through; nobody stays forever. How might we act if we consider ourselves guests in the lives of friends and family?
[…]
The good guest […] simply allows the other person to be a good host – to share his gifts, to play her music, … [ Read more ]
Author: Jeffrey Lockwood | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Insight, Perspective, Wisdom