Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other peopl...e has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others' reasons for action, or the basis of others' emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My responsibility to myself, my neighbors, my family and the human family is to try to tell the truth. That ain't easy. There are ...so few truth-speaking traditions in this society in which the myth of "Western civilization" has claimed the allegiance of so many. We have rarely been encouraged and equipped to appreciate the fact that the truth works, that it releases the Spirit and that it is a joyous thing. We live in a part of the world, for example, that equates criticism with assault, that equates social responsibility with naive idealism, that defines the unrelenting pursuit of knowledge and wisdom as fanaticism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with ...the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine ...under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot; the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best work of artists in any age is the work of innocence liberated by technical knowledge. The laboratory experiments that led... to the theory of pure color equipped the impressionists to paint nature as if it had only just been created.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ignorant are a reservoir of daring. It almost seems that those who have yet to discover the known are particularly equipped fo...r dealing with the unknown. The unlearned have often rushed in where the learned feared to tread, and it is the credulous who are tempted to attempt the impossible. They know not whither they are going, and give chance a chance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By all odds, earliest man, so naked to the elements and to deadly enemies, should have existed in a state of constant shock. We fi...nd him instead the only lighthearted being in a deadly serious universe.... He alone, with childish carelessness, tinkered and played, and exerted himself more in the pursuit of superfluities than of necessities. Yet the tinkering and playing, and the fascination with the nonessential, were a chief source of the inventiveness which enabled man to prevail over better-equipped and more-purposeful animals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a w...orld that no longer exists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Girls . . . were allowed to play in the house . . . and boys were sent outdoors. . . . Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns g...oing kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and roleplaying. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »