American
Author and
Essayist
(July 25,
1902 -
May 21,
1983)
"Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
"The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves."
"The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together."
"Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know."
"In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
"Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind."
"Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern."
"Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do."
"Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time."
"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
"The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."
"Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something."
"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are."
"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys."
"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents."
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
