Thoughts on Education

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.
    ~Norman Douglas

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
    ~Albert Einstein

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.
    ~Norman Douglas

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
    ~B. F. Skinner

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
    ~Malcolm Forbes

I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.
    ~Al McGuire

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
    ~Mark Twain

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
    ~Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa for the win

Teaching kids

"[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are."
—  Jim Henson,  It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

Advertising? Oy

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
    ~Norman Douglas, South Wind, 1917

Lies... and Truth

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

    ~ Adlai Stevenson, campaign statement in Fresno, California (10 September 1952)

Great soul and vast views

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.
John Adams, Second US President

The man who tries to make the flag an object of a single party is a greater traitor to that flag than any man who fires at it.
— Lloyd George)

Life's requirements

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley

I don’t want politicians who are 'above politics,' any more then I want a plumber who's 'above toilets'.'
— Ta-Nahesi Coates

What does the economy look like?

"Markets do everything best – managing business and systemic risk, innovating, investing, organising executive reward – without the intervention of the supposed dead hand of the state and without any acknowledgement of wider social obligations." — A quote from The Guardian as part of an article that answers the second question.

Two questions:

1) If it works, what is it supposed to look like? How does the economy look and function?
2) Does that in any way match what the economy looks like right now?

Anarchists?

The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.
— G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

Trust

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.
   —Norman Douglas


How some things never change.

If given the truth...

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
     --- Abraham Lincoln

That's the real key, isn't it? "If given the truth... "

Two centuries ago, our forebears would have known the precise history and source of almost every one of the limited number of things they ate and owned. They would have been familiar with the pig, the carpenter, the weaver, the loom and the dairymaid. The range of items available for purchase may have grown exponentially since then, but our understanding of their genesis has grown ever more obscure. We are now as imaginatively disconnected from the production and distribution of our goods as we are practically in reach of them, a process of alienation which has stripped us of opportunities for wonder, gratitude and guilt.

  —Alain De Botton, from The Enlightening Bridge Between Art and Work

The world is a dangerous place

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
    ~Albert Einstein

Masters of our fate

the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
    --- Abraham Lincoln

It has been a year!

I hadn't realized it was so long since I posted. From my Facebook posting:

So we come to the end of another year, on the Grrrrrgorian calendar (Gregorian, for those without dogs). For some reason, my brain keeps thinking "Julian" calendar, mostly because I feel very julienned by this year. Some of the bits were cooked to perfection, some left too raw, and a few, blessed few, fried beyond recognition. The rest? Comfortably done.

So starts a new year, with new beginnings. From Semisonic's song, Closing Time, comes the wonderful line "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Let's see what kind of beginnings 2010 brings.

Thoughts from chocolate

I was given a wonderful jar for Christmas. It said "I'd give up chocolate, but I'm no quitter." From the wrappers of the Dove chocolate inside are a few thoughts:

• Friendship is a gift in itself
• Joy is contagious
• A smile is the perfect gift, personal and encouraging
• Spending time is a greater gift than spending money
  (I said this to a friend earlier this year; I'm not sure he believes me)
• If old acquaintances be forgot, give them a call and remember

I couldn't choose just one...

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then - we elected them.
     ...Lily Tomlin

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
     ...Mark Twain

If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership.'
     --Will Rogers

Certainty?

We tend to defend vigorously things that in our deepest hearts we are not quite certain about. If we are certain of something we know, it doesn't need defending.
    --Madeleine L'Engle

If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
  -- Albert Einstein