Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Billy Collins

Quote by Billy Collins

“though they know in their adult hearts, even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed for his appalling behavior, that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids, their wives are Dopey Dopeheads and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.”

Quote by Billy Collins

Book:The Apple that Astonished Paris
Create image

Work

The Apple that Astonished Paris

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Billy Collins
Billy Collins

Billy Collins is a renowned American poet, born on March 22, 1941. His poetry is known for its simplicity, humor, and profound insights, making it popular among readers. Collins served as the United States Poet Laureate and taught at several universities. more

You May Also Like

“A growing body of evidence suggests that teaching babies ASL may improve their ability to speak. Again, this indicates a link between manual signing and vocal speech. Babies express cognitive abilities through certain hand gestures (e.g., by pointing with the index finger) earlier than they do through articulated words (the latter require more refined oral motor skills, which very young babies do not yet possess).”

Child DevelopmentAsl
Book:The NONVERBAL DICTIONARY of gestures, signs and body language cues
Create image

“Ellington would be growing up in a culture saturated with an idea you might call the cognitive hypothesis: the belief... that success today primarily depends on cognitive skills - the kind of intelligence that gets measured on IQ tests... and that the best way to develop these skills is to practice them as much as possible, beginning as early as possible. ...But in the past decade, a disparate group of scientists have begun to produce evidence that calls into question the cognitive hypothesis. What matters most in a child's development... is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities: self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.”

Child Development
Book:How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
Create image

“Falitz began running seminars for the group, but she never understood why Terrace was hiring people who did not know ASL for an ASL project. Wambach's criticism went further. She thought that Nim should have been raised in a deaf family from infancy. Giving him to the LaFarges was like putting a child in an Italian family to learn German.”

LinguisticsSign LanguageAslChimpanzeeNim
Book:Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
Create image

“Wambach's concerns raised questions about the impact that deaf signers could have on Project Nim, and perhaps inadvertently about how Terrace's study might compare with the work done by the Gardners in Nevada, who had expressly designed their experiments to include deaf signers. Simply having Falitz sign at the weekly meetings and interpret for Wambach in the discussions brought a new dimension to their work. Wambach was not particularly critical of Terrace, who was older and far more established than she, but she wanted the staff to have a better understanding of the world of deaf speakers—those who used ASL because they needed a language. Thanks to Wambach, the chimp project began attracting deaf volunteers (including one who is remembered for having love and hate tattooed on his knuckles), who formed a small subculture within Terrace's staff. In an attempt to bridge these two worlds, one night the deaf volunteers arranged to plug up the ears of the hearing staff and take them out to a restaurant for dinner. They were instructed to communicate exclusively in ASL from the moment the plugs were placed in their ears on the way to the restaurant, during the meal, and all the way back to Delafield. The hearing group found the experience to be a terrible struggle. But what made an indelible impression on Johnson was the way that everybody in the restaurant spoke really slowly and loudly to them, treating them as if they were all mentally incapacitated.”

ChimpanzeesLanguage LearningSign LanguageAslNim Chimpsky
Book:Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
Create image

“Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful.”

HumansFaithViolenceThought Provoking
Book:The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Create image