A teacher should never do your thinking for you. She should give you texts to read and guide you along the path of making sense of them for yourself. She should introduce you to the books and essays of writers who disagree with one another and ask you to determine whose case is better.
~ Caitlin Flanagan via The Atlantic
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To swerve from the expected course so often is to become inevitably fascinated by what Philip Roth once described as the “counterlife,” the alternative version of existence, where what ifs are fully rendered in the imagination.
~ Franklin Foer via The Atlantic
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It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~ John Steinbeck
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Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
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Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister—corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear.
~ Richard Rorty
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A living dog is better than a dead lion.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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Literature is a battleground of conflicting faiths, and nobler passions than envy are involved.
~ Wilfrid Sheed
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A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.
~ John le Carré
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Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.
~ Peter Drucker
In school, a lot of success is individual: How do I stand out? In life, most success is team-based: How can we work together? Grades reveal who is persistent, self-disciplined, and compliant—but they don’t reveal much about emotional intelligence, relationship skills, passion, leadership ability, creativity, or courage.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
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