“I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.”
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
“So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
― Man's Search for Meaning
― Man's Search for Meaning
Matthew’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Matthew’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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