A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a person, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

John C. Lilly

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Is anything really valuable ever learned at school?  I sometimes doubt it.  Moreover, many wiser men doubt it, though they commonly make an exception of reading and writing...I go further, I believe that even in the matter of reading and writing children commonly teach themselves, or one another.  There should be more sympathy for school children. The idea that they are happy is of a piece with the idea that the lobster in the pot is happy.  They are, in more ways than one, the worst and most pathetic victims of the complex of inanities and cruelties called civilization.

H. L. Mencken

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A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, or to stand one or two representatives, of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

Herman Hesse

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It is not the right of property, which is protected, but the right to property.  Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, and the right to his property.  These three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right.  To give a man his life but deny him his liberty is to take from him all that makes his life worth living.  To give him his liberty but take from him the property, which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.

The Hon. George Sutherland,

Justice of the U.S. SUP CRT

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What I am saying is that it is not so much what a man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap, he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of over-coming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders what he really is -- whether he is what he just was or is what he's about to be.

George A. Kelly

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My wife, Elise, and I have four children.  They're all different, and they all had different educational needs.  One is very bright and needed a rigorous academic environment.  Another is dyslexic and needed a very special school. Another is scientifically inclined, the other more artistic; they needed schools that would suit them. Fortunately, Elise and I could afford to choose the school best suited to each of our children.  All parents should have that opportunity.  One cannot treat all children the same way because every child is different.

Gov. Pete du Pont

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The question of desirable grief and pain or the necessity for it must also be faced. Is growth and self-fulfillment possible at all without pain and grief and sorrow and turmoil? If these are to some extent necessary and unavoidable, then to what extent? If grief and pain are sometimes necessary for growth of the person, then we must learn not to protect people from them automatically as if they were always bad. Sometimes they may be good and desirable in view of the ultimate good consequences. Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of overprotection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual.

Abraham H. Maslow

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A warrior cannot be helpless or bewildered or frightened, not under any circumstances. For a warrior there is time only for his impeccability; everything else drains his power, impeccability replenishes it. Impeccability is to do your best in whatever you're engaged in. The key to this matter of impeccability is the sense of not having time. As a rule of thumb, when you feel and act like an immortal being that has all the time in the world you are not impeccable; at those times you should turn, look around, and then realize that your feeling of having time is an idiocy. There are no survivors on this earth!

don Juan Matus

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Individualism comes naturally and inevitably out of man.  It is the point to which all development tends.  It is the differentiation to which all organisms grow.  It is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of life quickens.  To ask whether individualism is practical is like asking whether evolution is practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no evolution except towards individualism.  When this tendency is not expressed, it is a case of artificially arrested growth, or of disease, or of death.

Oscar Wilde

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In some strange sense this is a participatory universe. What we have been accustomed to call "physical reality" turns out to be largely a papier-mache construction of our imagination plastered in between the solid iron pillars of our observations. These observations constitute the only reality. Until we see why the universe is built this way, we have not understood the first thing about it. We can well believe that we will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.

John Wheeler

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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.  Specialization is for insects.

Lazarus Long

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It is time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity.  It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.

Albert Shanker

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The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.  It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company...a church...a home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.  And so it is with you...we are in charge of our Attitudes.

Charles Swindoll

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Human personality is generally considered a gratuitous and more or less private concern.  It is supposed to have something to do with how one impresses others, how one can "put himself over."  This is an American stereotype that has little to do with personality as a vehicle for human interaction.  It fails to recognize that the personality and its inner organization are the supreme implements for adaptation in its widest sense.  It is not a matter to be dismissed lightly. It is of the highest social importance. 

Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey

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Despotism Over Mind and Body...

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

John Stuart Mill

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Language not only serves thought but makes possible thoughts, which could not exist without it. Words are like bullets in truth's bandolier, and poets are truth's snipers.  Thus, poets are the mad midwives of reality.  To be a true poet is to become God.

George Wu

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In every generation there are those who want to rule well -- but they mean to rule.  They promise to be good masters -- but they mean to be masters.

Daniel Webster

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Intelligence is reflected in the extent to which one can profit from experience, while maturity is reflected in the extent to which one can profit from other people's experience.

David Center

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It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses, which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom, resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, and no refuge.

This is a very important point: much as we all like to think we can add something to the quantitative model output, the truth is that very often quantitative models represent a ceiling in performance (from which we detract) rather than a floor (to which we can add)...We all think that we know better than simple models...There is plenty of evidence to suggest that we tend to overweight our own opinions and experiences against statistical evidence...The key to the quantitative model's performance is that it has a known error rate, whereas our error rates are unknown.

James Montier

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Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.