Clive > Clive's Quotes

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
― Plato

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”
― Jacques Barzun

“Teachers don't just teach; they can be vital personalities who help young people to mature, to understand the world, and to understand themselves. A good education consists of much more than useful facts and marketable skills.”
― Charles Platt

“Throwing herself into learning helped Miri ignore the painful chill of solitude around her.”
― Shannon Hale, Princess Academy

“We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.”
― Ernest Shackleton, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“I have to speak my mind. Because what is in my mind is always more interesting than what is happening in the world outside my mind.”
― John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

“Then, if to make your ruin more,
You'll peevishly be coy,
Die with the scandal of a whore
And never know the joy.”
― John Wilmot, The Complete Poems

“After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole.
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God's everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more.”
― John Wilmot

“To live at all is miracle enough.”
― Mervyn Peake, Collected Poems

“Civilized people don't feel.”
― Mervyn Peake, Complete Nonsense

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows