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The Gift of Fire

Book by Richard Mitchell · 9 quotes · Education, Deliberations, Children

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The Gift of Fire Quotes

“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.”

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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.”

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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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