By reimagining college-admissions criteria, James Conant hoped to spark a social and cultural revolution. The age of the Well-Bred Man was vanishing. The age of the Cognitive Elite was here.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
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In trying to construct a society that maximized talent, James Conant and his peers were governed by the common assumptions of the era: Intelligence, that highest human trait, can be measured by standardized tests and the ability to do well in school from ages 15 to 18. Universities should serve as society’s primary sorting system, segregating the smart from the not smart. Intelligence is randomly distributed across the population, so sorting by intelligence will yield a broad-based leadership class.
~ David Brooks
via How the Ivy League Broke America
published by The Atlantic
:::
Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can’t make head or tail: you’d make a terrible witness.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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