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Richard Mitchell

Richard Mitchell Biography

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“If you should prefer to understand that children are those human beings who have not yet found the grasp of their own minds, then the task you have given yourself, that task of rearing a child wisely and well, is suddenly transformed from indoctrination to education, in its truest sense, and made not only possible but even likely--provided, to be sure, one little prerequisite, which is that you are not a child, that you have come into the grasp of your own mind.”

ChildrenEducationHumanIndoctrination
Book:The Gift of Fire
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“Only in some very special cases is comprehension the point of reading--in things like recipes and "reading material." The point of reading is understanding, and comprehension is to understanding as getting wet is to swimming. You must do the one before you can hope to do the other, but you don't do the other simply because you do the one.”

ReadingUnderstandingComprehension
Book:The leaning tower of Babel and other affronts by the Underground grammarian
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“It's not entirely absurd to think that somewhere in the past of mankind someone, for the first time, did in his mind the equivalent of putting an adjective to a noun, and saw, not only a relationship, but this special relationship between two things of different kinds....In sum, all the seemingly complicated kinds of modification in English are just ways of thinking and seeing how things go with each other or reflect each other. Modifiers in our language are not aids to understanding relationships; they are the ways to understand relationships. A mistake in this matter either comes from or causes a clouded mind. Usually it's both.”

ThinkingWordsThoughtEnglishModifiers
Book:Less Than Words Can Say
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“Like prepositional phrases, certain structural arrangements in English are much more important than the small bones of grammar in its most technical sense. It really wouldn't matter much if we started dropping the s from our plurals. Lots of words get along without it anyway, and in most cases context would be enough to indicate number. Even the distinction between singular and plural verb forms is just as much a polite convention as an essential element of meaning. But the structures, things like passives and prepositional phrases, constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow.”

ThinkingLanguageThoughtGrammar
Book:Less Than Words Can Say
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“Only out of a great delusion would I say, We have learned how to send men to the moon. No such thing is true. We have not. Somebody has, to be sure, but not "we". We have not wiped out polio, nor have we learned the secret of atomic energy. A few of us, and a very few of us, have done all such things. Unless I remember that, I am continually subject to the delusion that tells me that I am somehow "better" and more "advanced" than my very distant ancestors who painted pictures on the walls of caves, and just because I happen to be a member of we.”

EducationDelusionWe
Book:The Gift of Fire
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“If such as Thomas a Kempis and Bernard of Clairvaux are generous providers of the occasion of education, rather than reciters of precepts and beliefs, it is because they are seeking to be virtuous and to compose their own lives, rather than worrying that others might be vicious, leading discordant lives. Such teachers do the best that a teacher can do. In their own deliberations, they cast enough light that I may see something by it, if I happen to be looking.”

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Book:The Gift of Fire
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“A line runs from the meditations of the heart to the words of the mouth. The meditations are not clear to us until the mouth utters its words. If what the mouth utters is unclear or foolish or mendacious, it must be that the meditations are the same. But the line runs both ways. The words of the mouth will become the meditations of the heart, and the habit of loose talk loosens the fastenings of our understanding.”

IfsWayHeartRunningUnderstandingLinesClearMeditationHabitMouthsFoolishUnclear
Author:Richard Mitchell
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“In a government institution, there is only one area in which problems are taken seriously, and that is the political. Many of the strange things done in American educationism suddenly become perfectly understandable when we see them not as educational methods but as political maneuvers. We must understand illiteracy, therefore, the root of ignorance and thoughtlessness, as not some inadvertent failure to accomplish what was intended but simply a political arrangement of great value to somebody.”

DoneProblemGovernmentPoliticalValuesTakenIgnoranceStrangeAreasRootsMethodInstitutionsEducationalAccomplishArrangementsThings DoneStrange ThingsIlliteracyGreat ValueThoughtlessness
Author:Richard Mitchell
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“A mind can be overthrown by words; that's the point. What is happening to the brain of a person who uses the passive, who writes, 'Delay should not be allowed to take place' instead of 'Hurry'? The user of the passive verb doesn't want a universe in which responsible agents do their acts. You see? Bad language ultimately is IMMORAL.”

WantShouldWritingMindPersonsUseUniverseLanguageBrainHappeningsResponsibleAgentsUsersPassiveDelayImmoralVerbsBad Language
Author:Richard Mitchell
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“Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude.”

PeopleMindMightSchoolWishCommonSubjectsTyrannyNecksTyrantsEducateSchools And Education
Book:The leaning tower of Babel and other affronts by the Underground grammarian
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“Training is a good dog, a constant companion and an utterly loyal and devoted friend, and everyone should have one. Education is a nagging counselor. And, I am convinced, everyone does have one. It happens, however, that some nagging counselors have grown strong by a certain kind of nourishment. Others are weak and puny, even infantile, having never been nourished at all.”

ShouldKindDoeHappensCertainStrongDogTrainingWeakShould HaveConstantConvincedCompanionLoyalDevotedNourishmentCounselorInfantileNaggingGood Dog
Author:Richard Mitchell
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“If you should prefer to understand that children are those human beings who have not yet found the grasp of their own minds, then the task you have given yourself, that task of rearing a child wisely and well, is suddenly transformed from indoctrination to education, in its truest sense, and made not only possible but even likely--provided, to be sure, one little prerequisite, which is that you are not a child, that you have come into the grasp of your mind.”

IfsShouldMindHumansWellsChildrenLittlesMadeFoundGivenHuman BeingsTasksTransformedTruestIndoctrinationPrerequisitesRearing A Child
Author:Richard Mitchell
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“Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.”

IfsReasonWisdomLife IsOrderBornSimpleImpossibleMinutesIgnorantChainsAcquireOrganizeBackwardsUnreasonableBorn FreeExamined Life
Author:Richard Mitchell
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