Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience... of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What characterizes and defines our intellectual situation is precisely the wealth of contents that can no longer be mastered, the ...swollen facticity of knowledge (including moral facts), the spilling out of experience over the surfaces of nature, the impossibility of achieving an overview, the chaos of things that cannot be denied. We will perish from this, or overcome it by becoming a spiritually stronger type of human being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Miss Dudley ... gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid- ocean; unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is d...oing there. She sails gaily along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to paint, but she is only a second-rate amateur and will never be any thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the same peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and mouth all end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which gives a kind of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind and face have the same curves."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A great deal of unnecessary worry is indulged in by theatregoers trying to understand what Bernard Shaw means. They are not satisf...ied to listen to a pleasantly written scene in which three or four clever people say clever things, but they need to purse their lips and scowl a little and debate as to whether Shaw meant the lines to be an attack on monogamy as an institution or a plea for manual training in the public school system.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, "Be tolerant--even of evil." Logicall...y the next step would be to say to our commonwealth's criminals, "I disagree that it's all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion." Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what... passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language must be raked, the secrets of slaughter-houses and infamous hole that cannot front the day, must be ransacked, to tell wh...at negro slavery has been. These men, our benefactors, as they are producers of corn and wine, of coffee, of tobacco, of cotton, of sugar, of rum and brandy; gentle and joyous themselves, and producers of comfort and luxury for the civilized world,--there seated in the finest climates of the globe, children of the sun,--I am heart-sick when I read how they came there, and how they are kept there. Their case was left out of the mind and out of the heart of their brothers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transc...ripts of their readings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is natural, now, to think of there being connected with a sign (name, combination of words, letter) besides that to which the s...ign refers, which may be called the reference of the sign, also what I should like to call the sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained. In our example, accordingly, [an example in which lines a, b, and c all intersect at a single point] the reference of the expressions 'the point of intersection of a and b' and 'the point of intersection of b and c' would be the same, but not their senses. The reference of 'evening star' would be the same as that of 'morning star,' but not the sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We need to nurture uniqueness and independence.... Ours must be schools for ego- strength--the child's ego, not the teacher's. "Yo...u can do it!" has to be the teacher's consistent, over-and-over steady slogan: "You can hang up your own coat...." "You can pour your own juice...." "You can climb to the top...." "You can figure it out." We have no stake in schools where children learn to color within the lines. No stake in pushing for unnecessary conformity, no stake in children submerging themselves in the group, no stake in everlasting lessons in obediently following the directions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »