#276 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Wednesday February 16)
Good morning,
Just a few great quotations of inspiration today, on notions I’ve been thinking about recently from people who are wiser than I:
ON EDUCATION AND BOOK BURNING
“The ability to be awed, excited, and inspired by ideas is a practice that radically opens the mind. Excited about learning, ecstatic about thoughts and ideas, as teachers and students we have the opportunity to use knowledge in ways that positively transform the world we live in.”
-- bell hooks, in Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom
“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
ON HUMILITY AND WISDOM
“We're all born a genius, but life has a way of de-geniusing you.”
--Buckminster Fuller
Or, as Dylan might say, “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.”
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."
--Mahatma Gandhi
ON PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND AGENCY
“The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.”
-- Joan Didion, "On Self-Respect", in Slouching Towards Bethlehem
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
Have a great day,
Glenn
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