Quotes by American Authors - Page 139

True education gives a child wings to fly in his imaginative blue sky.
Debasish Mridha
Be courageous enough to learn from failures and bold enough to begin anew.
Debasish Mridha
As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; – let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; – let it be written in Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; – let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.
Abraham Lincoln
Books and school are great for learning but there is no substitute for life and living to provide a real education.
Ken Poirot
There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
Harold Bloom
This larger goal wouldn’t be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing.
Robert M. Pirsig
Grades really cover up failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not. But if the grades are removed the class is forced to wonder each day what it’s really learning. The questions, What’s being taught? What’s the goal? How do the lectures and assignments accomplish the goal? become ominous. The removal of grades exposes a huge and frightening vacuum.
Robert M. Pirsig
The more you know, the more you will be able to appreciate the beauty of life and your heart will desire to learn.
Debasish Mridha
I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job
Charles Bukowski
The best teacher teaches by inspiring students to learn by showing them the ultimate purpose of learning.
Debasish Mridha
We employ education and the convictions gained through the intermeshing of personal experiences and fresh ideas to establish the configuration of our being that in actuality was our mysterious potentiality from the very inception of our birth.
Kilroy J. Oldster
I don’t teach. I just show them why to learn, what to learn, how to learn, and the ultimate purpose of learning.
Debasish Mridha
Scientists are aware that all the lab-rat tests in the world, once compiled, can tell us only how lab rats act when tested, and that is how we must begin to view school: all that you can learn in a school classroom is what goes on inside a school classroom.
Anne Elizabeth Moore
For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.
Anthony M. Esolen
I don't want to spend the rest of my life paying off loans when I don't even like school to begin with.
Robin Talley
The obvious cure for the tragic shortcomings of human intuition in a high-tech world is education. And this offers priorities for educational policy: to provide students with the cognitive tools that are most important for grasping the modern world and that are most unlike the cognitive tools they are born with. The perilous fallacies we have seen in this chapter, for example, would give high priority to economics, evolutionary biology, and probability and statistics in any high school or college curriculum. Unfortunately, most curricula have barely changed since medieval times, and are barely changeable because no one wants to be the philistine who seems to be saying that it is unimportant to learn a foreign language, or English literature, or trigonometry, or the classics. But no matter how valuable a subject may be, there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and a decision to teach one subject is also a decision not to teach another one. The question is not whether trigonometry is important, but whether it is more important than statistics; not whether an educated person should know the classics, but whether it is more important for an educated person to know the classics than to know elementary economics. In a world whose complexities are constantly challenging our intuitions, these trade-offs cannot responsibly be avoided.
Steven Pinker
In summary, a good teacher does the following:- never tells a student anything that the teacher thinks is true- never allows himself to be the ultimate judge of his own students' success- teacher practice first, theory second (if he must teach theory at all)- does not come up with lists of knowledge that every student must know- doesn't teach anything unless he can easily explain the use of learning it- assigns no homework, unless that homework is to produce something- groups students according to their interests and abilities, not their ages- ensures that any reward to a student is intrinsic- teaches students things they may actually need to know after they leave school- helps students come up with their own explanations when they have made a mistake- never assumes that a student is listening to what he is saying- never assumes that students will do what he asks them to do if what he asked does not relate to a goal they truly hold- never allows pleasing the teacher to be the goal of the student- understands that students won't do what he tells them if they don't understand what is being asked of them- earns the respect of students by demonstrating abilities- motivate students to do better, and does not help them to do better- understands that his job is to get students to do something- understands that experience, not teachers, changes belief systems- confuses students- does not expect credit for good teaching
Roger Schank
I'm not suggesting that teachers never tell the truth, only that it isn't necessary to do it all the time. Since coming to one's own conclusions is mostly how we learn, the real job of a teacher is to force students to come to sensible conclusions by confronting what they already believe with stuff that is antithetical to those beliefs. A confused person has only 2 choices. Admit he is confused and doesn't care, or resolve the confusion. Resolving the confusion invloves thinking. Teachers can encourage thinking by making sure students have something confusing to think about.
Roger Schank
Certain things need to be done again and again in life, but those things can be learned only in context, not as an abstraction. Different contexts must be provided in order to motivate students and to provide real world skills that will be remembered, not because they were studied and tested but because they were practicied again and again.
Roger Schank
Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars.But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all.To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want toget ahead.The truth is, you do
Brian Koppelman
Mundane education is regrettably prosaic," - Jace Lightwood-Herondale
Cassandra Clare
Mogo living brings about true freedom. When you have the inner conviction to do the most good and the least harm, you are free to say no to media, social, and peer pressures. You are free from a nagging sense that your life does not have value or meaning. You are free to imagine and then create a truly successful (in the deepest meaning on the word) life. You are free to be at peace with yourself and all those whom your life touches.
Zoe Weil
It could be said that a liberal education has the nature of a bequest, in that it looks upon the student as the potential heir of a cultural birthright, whereas a practical education has the nature of a commodity to be exchanged for position, status, wealth, etc., in the future. A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past. The practical educators assume that human society itself is the only significant context, that change is therefore fundamental, constant, and necessary, that the future will be wholly unlike the past, that the past is outmoded, irrelevant, and an encumbrance upon the future -- the present being only a time for dividing past from future, for getting ready.But these definitions, based on division and opposition, are too simple. It is easy, accepting the viewpoint of either side, to find fault with the other. But the wrong is on neither side; it is in their division...Without the balance of historic value, practical education gives us that most absurd of standards: "relevance," based upon the suppositional needs of a theoretical future. But liberal education, divorced from practicality, gives something no less absurd: the specialist professor of one or another of the liberal arts, the custodian of an inheritance he has learned much about, but nothing from.
Wendell Berry
Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!
Jean Webster
Each day we wake up and make myriad choices that affect others. We clothe ourselves with shirts, pants, and shoes that may have been sewn together by women working in factories fourteen-plus hours a day for a nonliving wage; we buy products manufactured in ways the destroy forests, pollute waterways, and poison the air; we wash our hair with shampoos that may have been squeezed into the eyes of conscious rabbits or force-fed to them in quantities that kill; and on and on. As Derrick Jensen has written in his book "The Culture of Make Believe", "It is possible to destroy a culture without being aware of its existence. It is possible to commit genocide or ecocide from the comfort of one's living room
Zoe Weil
Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney Harris
Hey, Geekoid!" yelled Duncan Dougal, "Why do you read so much? Don't you know how to watch TV?
Bruce Coville
A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded — such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him.‘What you have told us,’ says he, ‘is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours.‘In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains.‘They said to each other, “It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her.” They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: “Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.” They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left had touched it they found kidney-beans; and where her backside had sat on it they found tobacco.’The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: ‘What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.’The Indian, offended, replied: ‘My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?
Benjamin Franklin
People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices
Gary L. Francione
So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions, the best educated mind being the mind which has the largest stock of them, ready to meet the largest possible variety of the emergencies of life. The lack of education means only the failure to have acquired them, and the consequent liability to be 'floored' and 'rattled' in the vicissitudes of experience.
William James
Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.
Lorrie Moore
All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.
Zoe Weil
It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic coaching for his scholastic difficulties.
Alice Duer Miller
Someday, I hope that we will all be patriots of our planet and not just of our respective nations.
Zoe Weil
Transparency is critical in public health and epidemics laypeople become either effective force-multipliers or stubborn walls.
T.K. Naliaka
You see it as me going back. I see it as me staying on track.
Germany Kent
Far too often the ‘things’ that men define as success do little more than successfully destroy the lives of the very men who achieve those ‘things.’ And while I must admit that there is an authentic element of success in all of that, it’s the kind of success that I would much prefer to successfully avoid.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
At the very moment when people underestimate you is when you can make a breakthrough.
Germany Kent
Despite the voices of the culture that would scream otherwise, victory is irreparably tied to the surrender of self. And that explains why so few are truly victorious.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It’s one thing to set a goal. It’s another, however, when you get so caught up in the details that you neglect to review your progress. Reevaluation enables you to improve your aim to ensure you hit your target.
Susan C.Young
Reconsideration creates a great opportunity for you to contemplate a previous decision, opinion, action, behavior, or position. “Second-guessing” can at times be very helpful. Have you ever felt strongly about something, but when you reconsidered new information which came to light you changed your position?
Susan C.Young
Successfully juggling the demands of your personal and professional life may feel like a daunting and unrealistic task. Employers know all too well that if an employee’s personal life is suffering, their work life will too. And visa-versa. Even the most self-aware and diligent person can be challenged. How can you rebalance your life to prevent burnout and promote well-being?
Susan C.Young
Have you ever experienced a shattering in your own personal life? Where death, divorce, financial loss, failure, or disaster changed your world to such an extent that you weren’t sure how to rebuild again? Clearing the debris from the aftermath is a great first step. It enables you to start with a clean slate so you can rebuild exactly what you desire. Where can you begin?
Susan C.Young
When you yearn to create positive change, stop focusing on your old stories. If you hope to transform your life from the inside out and become a new improved version of your former self, refocus on what you want rather than what you don’t
Susan C.Young
Do you ever feel like you are running on empty? What is missing from your life? What would it take to plug the holes and stop the energy drains? When you see, feel, or think about lack, scarcity, or emptiness, seek ways to fill the holes, replenish and return to a state of abundance and fulfillment.
Susan C.Young
It is in your replanting or transplanting that you can do some of your best work and expand your roots to grow, thrive, and flourish. Whether you have needed to change places physically or metaphorically, replanting and putting down new roots will encourage new possibilities.
Susan C.Young
Breathe in peace, breathe out stress. Relaxing can bring relief to much of what ails you. In our stressful and often negative world, your decision to make relaxing a priority will help you navigate, handle, and minimize stress. Doing so will positively impact your health, well-being, and happiness.
Susan C.Young
Somewhere between handling challenges, taking care of business, and juggling responsibilities, you may have lost pieces of yourself which you long to recover. Perhaps they were buried and forgotten long ago. Rediscovering is more than just being reminded of these golden treasures. It is being able to excavate your riches by pulling them out, polishing them off, and allowing them to shine again.
Susan C.Young
Connecting with others gives us a sense of inclusion, connection, interaction, safety, and community. Your vibe attracts your tribe, so if you want to attract positive and healthy relationships, be one! Staying connected and getting reconnected feeds the flow of goodness which empowers our humanity.
Susan C.Young
Reconnect to what makes you happy and brings you Joy. If there is something that used to make you happy which you have stopped doing, do it again. Seek to find deeper meaning and significance rather than living on the surface.
Susan C.Young
A diamond’s creation requires immense pressure and intense temperatures to reach its highest potential. Without enduring the adversity and pressure of its environment, the diamond would never become the treasure it was meant to be. May the changes you grow through bring incredible value in helping you forge a remarkable and multi-faceted life.
Susan C.Young
Be yourself....and make the world adjust!
Germany Kent
No one else knows exactly what the future holds for you, no one else knows what obstacles you've overcome to be where you are, so don't expect others to feel as passionate about your dreams as you do.
Germany Kent
When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.
Idowu Koyenikan
If you are in a position where you can reach people, then use your platform to stand up for a cause. HINT: social media is a platform.
Germany Kent
Focus on your work. Do what you're great at. Don't compare yourself to others and or waste time criticizing the lives and work of others. Do what matters most to you and make a difference doing that.
Germany Kent
Your words control your life, your progress, your results, even your mental and physical health. You cannot talk like a failure and expect to be successful.
Germany Kent
Be around people that make you want to be a better person, who make you feel good, make you laugh, and remind you what's important in life.
Germany Kent
Freedom of Speech doesn't justify online bullying. Words have power, be careful how you use them.
Germany Kent
There is no shortcut for hard work that leads to effectiveness. You must stay disciplined because most of the work is behind the scenes.
Germany Kent