Form - Quotes
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don`t know anything about.
Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
I`m angry that when people run for political office in the United States, it`s considered legitimate to grill them about their employment background, their positions on legislation, their positions on social issues, the taxes they`ve paid [...]... but it`s considered invasive and intolerant to ask if they believe in talking snakes, demonic possession, magic underwear, magic crackers that turn into the flesh of their god, an Earth that was created 6,000 years ago, or a god who put himself on Earth in human form and then sacrificed himself to himself to atone for sins that other people committed and to save humanity from the punishment he himself was planning to dole out. If someone is going to make decisions about science funding, emerging medical technology, our educational system, and so on... I think it matters if they believe any of that shit, and I bloody well want to know about it.
I wanted to be free, free to do and to give only as my whims dictated. [...] The moment anything was expected or demanded of me I balked. That was the form my independence took.
The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.
Good art speaks for itself. That doesn’t mean you have to like it. So the next time you go to an art show, or look at anything for that matter, observe what effect it has on you and try to form your own opinion. That way you become the critic and not a mouthpiece for someone else’s opinions.
We live in a society where people are uncomfortable with not knowing. Children aren`t taught to say "I don`t know," and honesty in this form is rarely modeled for them. They too often see adults avoiding questions and fabricating answers, out of either embarrassment or fear, and this comes at a price. When children are embarrassed by or afraid of the feeling of not knowing, they are preoccupied with escaping their discomfort, rather than being motivated to learn. This robs them of the joy of curiosity. Let`s celebrate the feelings of awe and wonder in our children, as the foundation for all learning. Let`s teach children to say "I don`t know" and help them understand the power behind it. Let`s talk to them about how it feels to not know something. And, finally, let`s be honest with children about the limits of our own knowledge.
Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today - the age of science - science fiction is our mythology.
I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image.
Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow’s too lazy to form an opinion.
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us.