On Genuine Poetry

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

– T.S. Eliot

On Hope

“When did ‘hope’ become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance.”

– Rich Hall

Changing Education Paradigms

‘Now this tells an interesting story because you could have imagined it going the other way could you? You start off not being very good but you get better as you get older. But this shows two things: one is we all have this capacity and; two, it mostly deteriorates. Now a lot of things have happened to these kids as they’ve grown up, a lot. But one of the most important things that has happened to them I’m convinced is that by now they’ve become educated. They’ve spent ten years at school being told there’s one answer it’s at the back and don’t look. And don’t copy because that’s cheating. Outside school that’s called collaboration no but inside schools… This isn’t because teachers want it this way it’s just because it happens that way. It’s because it’s in the gene pool of education. They have to think differently about human capacity. We have to get over this old conception of academic, non-academic, abstract, theoretical, vocational and see it for what it is – a myth.

Second, you have to recognise that most great learning happens in groups, that collaboration is the stuff of growth. If we atomise people and separate them and judge them separately we form a kind of disjunction between them and their natural learning environment. And thirdly, it’s crucially about the culture of our institutions, the habits of the institution and the habitats that they occupy.’

– Robinson, K. (2008, June 16) Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms. Retrieved from Ted.com

What We Must Do

‘We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world — its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.’

– Denonn. L.E., Egner. R.E. Ed. 1961. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell London, United Kingdom: George Allen & Unwin (1962) p. 597

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Bertrand Russell delivered the lecture Why I am not a Christian (of which this is an excerpt) on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall.

Je Suis Paris

‘We’ll always have Paris.’

– Wallis, H.B. (Producer), Curtiz. M. (Director). (1942). Casablanca [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Bros.

Love’s Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

– Percy Bysshe Shelley

On Precautions

“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”

– Alfred Adler

On Staying Active

“It seems to me that in order to stay active your primary motive should be enjoyment.”

– Jan Timman