Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is no more irritating fellow than the man who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or liberty, by quoting from Webster.
In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
The teacher's role in discussion is to keep it going along fruitful lines - be moderating, guiding, correcting and arguing like one more students.
Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving.
If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.
The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice
A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser.
If one wants another only for some self-satisfaction, usually in the form of sensual pleasure, that wrong desire takes the form of lust rather than love.
Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.
A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.
I wonder if most people ever ask themselves why love is connected with reproduction. And if they do ask themselves about this, I wonder what answer they give.
Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business.
The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good, by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.
Education is the sum total of one's experience, and the purpose of higher education is to widen our experiences beyond the circumscribed existence or our own daily lives.
There is only one situation I can think of in which men and women make an effort to read better than they usually do. It is when they are in love and reading a love letter.
Too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.
Angels are able to know and understand better than the human intellect can, precisely because such knowledge and understanding comes to them by way of ideas infused in them by God.
I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way.
All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.
... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.
We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others.
Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
Idling is important. Most people don't know how. They're afraid of it. This explains why they turn on the television set or pick up the newspaper. They think they have to be doing something.
One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.
We wish the joy of love, the joy of companionship, of being in the company of, in the presence of the person we love, of living a common life with that person, perhaps ultimately the joy of perfect union.
Freud's view is that all love is sexual in its origin or its basis. Even those loves which do not appear to be sexual or erotic have a sexual root or core. They are all sublimations of the sexual instinct.
Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.
Teachers may think they are stuffing minds, but all they are ever affecting is the memory. Nothing can ever be forced into anyone's mind except by brainwashing, which is the very opposite of genuine teaching.
When we ask for love, we don't ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be considerate of us. There is a world of difference here between demanding justice... and begging or pleading for love.
First, an angel is spiritually present at whatever place in physical space happens to be occupied by the body on which it acts. It can be present at that place without leaving Heaven which is its spiritual residence.
I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought.
We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also.
There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.
Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
It is love rather than sexual lust or unbridled sexuality if, in addition to the need or want involved, there is also some impulse to give pleasure to the persons thus loved and not merely to use them for our own selfish pleasure.
My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy.
If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
The ability to retain a child's view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare - and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.
Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?
Political democracy cannot flourish under all economic conditions. Democracy requires an economic system which supports the political ideals of liberty and equality for all. Men cannot exercise freedom in the political sphere when they are deprived of it in the economic sphere.
Emancipation of human labor from economic servitude and exploitation, i.e., from organizations of production in which the conditions of work are determined by a master class who own the means of production, and in which the fruits of work are alienated from workers to the benefit of masters.
In Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos is his moral character, the source of his ability to persuade. The pathos is his ability to touch feelings to move people emotionally. The logos is his ability to give solid reasons for an action, to move people intellectually.
Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.
If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It’s the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.
The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.
If we consider men and women generally, and apart from their professions or occupations, there is only one situation I can think of in which they almost pull themselves up by their bootstraps, making an effort to read better than they usually do. When they are in love and are reading a love letter, they read for all they are worth.
... The person who, at any stage of a conversation, disagrees, should at least hope to reach agreement in the end. He should be as much prepared to have his own mind changed as seek to change the mind of another ... No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts.
If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.
If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.