The biggest thing I noticed growing up when I was doing BMX racing or playing rugby through to secondary school level, was seeing the parents who were so desperate to see their kids do well that they were almost living their lives through their kids and putting huge pressure on them to the point they weren't enjoying it.
Interpretation
Parents' pressure on children can hinder their enjoyment and success.
In this quote, Chris Hoy reflects on his observations from his youth in sports, noting that some parents exert excessive pressure on their children to succeed. This pressure can transform the experience from one of enjoyment and personal development into a stressful obligation, ultimately hindering the child's passion and love for the activity.
In practice
In a talk about youth sports, you might use this quote to illustrate the importance of fun over competition.
Someone like Jessica Ennis-Hill having her first baby then bouncing back to become world champion in the space of the year. I maybe wouldn't have appreciated just how big an achievement that was until I had my own child. It's an incredible thing.
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.
Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation.
A good part of 'The Information' is about the transition from an oral to a literary culture. Books effected such a great transformation in the way we think about the world, our history, our logic, mathematics, you name it. I think we would be greatly diminished as a people and as a culture if the book became obsolete.
Education from the lowest to the highest form must have for its object the training of the individual so that, in seeking the fullest satisfaction of his own nature, he will harmoniously perform his function as a member of a corporate society.
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
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