Quote for today

The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty - and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.

H.L. Mencken, February 12, 1923

Quote for today

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
- Thomas H. Huxley

Quotes on Education

"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent."
-John Dewey

“Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed customs. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”
-William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906.

"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role."
-William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906.

“Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society. Social systems which endure are built on the average person who can be trained to occupy any position adequately if not brilliantly.”
-Stuart Chase, The Proper Study of Mankind, 1948.

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."
-Justice H. Walter Croskey, 2008.

Quotes for today

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
- Henry Ford

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
- Sidney J. Harris

Quotes for the evening

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

- Andre Malraux

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Quote for today (well, very very early this morning)

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

Douglas Adams

Quote for Today

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
- Charles Austin Beard

Quote for today ~

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
- Carl Sagan

Quote for today ~

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco

Quote for today

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.
- Carl Becker