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Jon Weiner on Richard Hofstadter

October 13, 2006 history Leave a comment

Great extended essay from the Nation.

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John Dewey

I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

Crane Man

The same wind that blows one door shut often blows another one open.

Walt Whitman

I anticipate the day when some wise man will start out to argue that two and two are not four but five or something else: history proving that two and two couldn’t be four: and probability, too: yes, more than that, the wise man will prove it out of his own consciousness—prove it for somebody—for a few: they will believe in him—a body of disciples will believe: then, presto! you have a new religion!

Albert Camus

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four.

George Orwell

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

End of the World

"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." TSE "There will be no other end of the world." CM

Gordy/Sherman Alexie

"If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong."

James Thurber

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."

Paulo Freire

"Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world and with each other."

Larry Laudan (1990)

"The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time."

bell hooks (1994)

"We must learn to enter the classroom "whole" and not as "disembodied spirit."

William James (1898)

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits,—practical, emotional, and intellectual,—systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.

Kurt Vonnegut

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it was well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Virginia Woolf

We have got to teach ourselves to understand literature. Money is no longer going to do our thinking for us.

Paul Wellstone

We all do better when we all do better.

Soul Asylum

What you destroy today you might regret tomorrow. When you're young and defensive, it comes off offensive, and it's hard to repay the tolerance that you borrow.

The Swamp Thing

Very well…but hear this…men of the city…I have tolerated your species….for long enough. Your cruelty…and your greed…and your insufferable arrogance…you blight the soil…and poison the rivers. You raze the vegetation till you cannot…even feed…your own kind. Fools, if nature were to shrug…or raise an eyebrow…Then you should all be gone…

Amos

Woe to them that are at ease in Zion…

(6:1)

Daryl Dixon

When we’re out there, it’s always the same. Sooner or later we run.

Dolly Parton

Forgiveness is everything.

Rilke

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Goodreads

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran

White River Crossing

The Wisdom of No Escape And the Path of Loving Kindness

Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom

H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth

A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction

More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

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Rilke

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

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