Quotes4study

Every forward step of social progress brings men into closer relations with their fellows, and increases the importance of the pleasures and pains derived from sympathy. We judge the acts of others by our own sympathies, and we judge our own acts by the sympathies of others, every day and all day long, from childhood upwards, until associations, as indissoluble as those of language, are formed between certain acts and the feelings of approbation or disapprobation. It becomes impossible to imagine some acts without disapprobation, or others without approbation of the actor, whether he be one's self or anyone else. We come to think in the acquired dialect of morals. An artificial personality, the "man within," as Adam Smith calls conscience, is built up beside the natural personality. He is the watchman of society, charged to restrain the antisocial tendencies of the natural man within the limits required by social welfare.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

            -- Gifts for Children --

This is easy.  You never have to figure out what to get for children,

because they will tell you exactly what they want.  They spend months and

months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday- morning

cartoon-show advertisements.  Make sure you get your children exactly what

they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices.  If your child thinks

he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you'd

better get it.  You may be worried that it might help to encourage your

child's antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial</p>

tendencies until you've seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not

get the right gift.

        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

Fortune Cookie

A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems

best.  That's dangerous.  Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to

serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the

schools as 'standards'?  Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to

work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if

not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,

elitist.  ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such

stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be

supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real

professionals.  Those texts are called 'reading material.'  They are the

academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,

and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating

resource centers along the roads.

        -- The Underground Grammarian

Fortune Cookie

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