Tom

“The Democrat Party is responsible for most of this and much more. It seeks to permanently control our governmental institutions, just as it dominates our cultural entities—from the media to academia, from entertainment to science. It seeks to delegitimize and eviscerate the Constitution—including the Bill of Rights, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, separation of powers, etc.—which obstructs its ideological designs. It abuses the rule of law by targeting its political opponents for harassment, investigation, and prosecution. In the end, it seeks to imprison them. On October 30, 2008, when Barack Obama shouted to a crowd that “[w]e are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” he was not kidding. On May 14, 2008, when Michelle Obama pronounced that “[w]e are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation,” she meant it.2 The Obamas are not alone among Democrat Party apparatchiks in their contempt for the country.”
― Mark R. Levin, The Democrat Party Hates America

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams

“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
― Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

“Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children–to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew.”
― John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life