The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
At it’s highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach—it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student’s mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.
And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.
A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.
But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.
But in terms of “psychological” time, most of us are still living in centuries past, stirred by ancient grudges, controlled by obsolete prejudices, driven by buried fears.
The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
When a man says “I know what I mean, but I can’t express it,” he generally does not know what he means—for there can be no knowledge without words; there can only be feelings.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
Much as a teacher may wince at the thought, he is also an entertainer—for unless he can hold his audience, he cannot really instruct or edify them.
Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until… we have stopped saying “It got lost ” and say “I lost it.”
There’s no point in burying a hatchet if you’re going to put up a marker on the site.
People who won’t help others in trouble “because they got into trouble through their own fault” would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning man until they learned whether he fell in through his own fault or not.
The true test of independent judgement is being able to dislike someone who admires us.
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Ninety percent of the world’s woe comes from people not knowing themselves their abilities their frailties and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until… we have stopped saying “It got lost ” and say “I lost it.”
The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out communication is getting through.
The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.
Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ‘Why not?’ and the other, ‘Why bother?’
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.
A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s leisure.
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.