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Compulsory Quotes

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Compulsory Quotes

“Most of the world’s problems are caused by people who made education compulsory, but personal development optional. Because of them, we have many intelligent people who lack good characters.”

WorldCharacterProblemSchoolLeadershipEducationCollegeIntelligentIntelligenceIsraelmore AyivorPersonal DevelopmentLeadersProblemsBehaviourCharactersMartin Luther King JrOptionalMartin Luther KingCompulsoryOptionMlkEductae
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
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“Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.”

LoveReasonTruthBeliefFearResponsibilityAtheismCrimeHealthMoralityEthicsEvidenceGuiltAtheistIntellectMythDebateRedemptionIndifferenceDictatorshipTotalitarianismHomo SapiensWishful ThinkingCompulsorySupreme BeingLove Your NeighborAtheist ArgumentRichard DawkinsDawkinsHuman SacrificeEternal PunishmentEternal FatherChristopher HitchensHitchensAncient MythChristianity Is ImmoralDivine DictatorshipGreat Atheist ArgumentHitchslapImmoral Christianity
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty----this is national consolidation in a free homeland.”

GivingFirstsStatesDreamGovernmentOpportunityGivenTemplesValleysPalestinianSovereigntyHomelandTransfersState GovernmentCompulsoryConsolidation
Author:David
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“The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service.”

WritingKindTwoDifferentParentMilitarySonPoetEuropeReactionsDifferent KindsProtectiveDistortionAnthologyCompulsoryMilitary Service
Author:Laura Riding
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“The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.”

ThinkingWorldShouldLawPurposeBeliefNaturalEventsInformationStructureForbiddenNatural LawScientific MethodFactualCompulsoryInventoryEnquiry
Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought
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“Kids don't know the language of figure skating. If you ask them to do a compulsory figure, they don't know how to, and that's so important for the edge quality. I think that's why the older skaters are still as popular as they are - because they have that quality that people are missing in this generation.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsStillsImportantKidsAsksLanguageSportsQualityKnow HowGenerationsMissingFiguresEdgesSkatingThis GenerationFigure SkatingCompulsorySkater
Author:Brian Boitano
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“The worship of the nation has been able to make men tolerate under its authority what they could never have tolerated from princes: a submission to rule, which, through sumptuary laws on food and drink, through conscription, through a cast-iron system of compulsory instruction for all on State ordered lines, and through a State examination at the gate of every profession, has almost killed the citizen's power to react upon that which controls him, and has almost destroyed that variety which is the mark of life.”

MenHas BeensStatesWisdomAbleLawPoliticsNationsLinesEconomyCitizensDrinkAuthorityWorshipMarkCastsProfessionDestroyedVarietyLiberalismIronGatesInstructionTolerateSubmissionExaminationCompulsoryFood And DrinkConscription
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.”

MenStatesWisdomPoliticsCompanyStepsEconomyConditionsSecurityCitizensBenefitsMassSlaveryPropertySlaveLiberalismWagesSufficiencyCompulsoryEmployingDoctoring
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“But a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose.”

IfsMenImportantMatterSufferingMankindCrossesIndependentRuinsConvinceExaminationSympatheticCompulsoryConvince Us
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.”

MilitaryArmyAttractionChiefsIdlenessCompulsoryMilitary Service
Book:WAR AND PEACE Complete Edition – All 15 Books in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the Greatest Russian Novelists and Author of Anna Karenina & The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Including the Biography & Memoirs of the Author)
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“Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Laborwas toil, distress, trouble, fatigue--an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.”

HumanityFallAnimalDarknessStruggleGraceTroubleSacrificeConditionsLaborPainfulPurityDirtDistressToilHumiliationFatigueEnablingExertionCompulsoryStruggling To SurviveFalls From Grace
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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“Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his qualifications, the words 'Remember that I too am mortal'.”

RememberLettersDoctorsMortalsPlatesQualificationsBrassCompulsory
Book:George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion
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“For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal.”

MeanChildrenImportantEndsFactsNextOpportunitySocialEducationRolesGenerationsAchieveEqualSolutionsIdealsUniversalNotionCurrentsBrilliantInventionChiefsExplanationContradictionNext GenerationAbandonmentCorrectionsPublic EducationEqual OpportunityCompulsoryPostponement
Book:All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure
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“Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls' Nourishment.”

ShouldFirstsChildrenBookSoulSchoolAmericaSpiritualGoalEducationWrittenEnglandConsistentBreastsMilkTestamentBostonPrintedNourishmentBabeAmerican LifeCompulsoryCompulsory Education
Author:Dorothy H Cohen
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“We have entered an Orwellian era in which entitlement replaces responsibility, coercion is described as compassion, compulsory redistribution is called sharing, race quotas substitute for diversity, and suicide is prescribed as 'death with dignity.' Political discourse has become completely corrupted. The reason is that if you tell people directly that you want to raise their taxes, transfer their wealth, count them by skin color, or let doctors kill them, most will object. Statists know this and therefore are obliged to obfuscate.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantReasonPoliticalPoliticsWealthRaceResponsibilityCompassionObjectsColorTaxesDiversityDignityDoctorsSkinsRaisesSuicideErasSubstitutesDiscourseObligedCoercionEntitlementTransfersCompulsorySkin ColorQuotaOrwellianPolitical DiscourseDeath With Dignity
Author:Theodore J. Forstmann
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“By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. - have ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.”

MayChildrenSocialTeacherCollegeMaterialsIndustryOur ChildrenProfitAlsEngineersPublishersFree MarketHandfulSchoolingPreventingTextbooksSchooledCompulsorySuppliersCompulsory Education
Author:John Taylor
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“From my experience let me say this: in today's world it is no bad thing for a politician to have had the benefit of a scientific background. And not only politicians. Those who work in industry, in commerce, in investment. Indeed, so important has it become that I believe we are right to make science a compulsory subject for all schoolchildren.”

WorldBelieveImportantTodayI BelieveSubjectsIndustryPoliticianBenefitsLet MeInvestmentBackgroundsBad ThingsCommerceCompulsoryToday's World
Author:Margaret Thatcher
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“Ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members." "We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.”

MenGivingPersonsWholeUseBodyMovingForceSocialCommunityLibertyHe ManJudgingOughtMembersConsequenceUniversalAbsolutesGoodsGrantsPortionsSovereignCompactCompulsoryAbsolute Power
Author:Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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“Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.”

MindHas BeensStatesBodyPoliticalBreakCitizensTaxesModelsTasksPropertyEducationalAcceptedDoctrineReleaseControlledSooner Or LaterPreyInfancyPolitical PowerSupremacyEducational SystemClutchSuperhumanCompulsoryOctopusTotalitarian State
Book:God of the Machine
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“In two weeks the sheeplike masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today.”

MenTwoEndsCountryStatesSeemsTodaySufferingPartyWeekMankindMilitaryMassDignityPreparedSakeExcitedNewspapersCivilizedUniformsSymptomsFuryTwo WeeksDeficiencyCompulsoryDisgracefulMilitary ServicePersonal Dignity
Author:Albert Einstein
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