The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.
Philip PullmanRead
Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Children may be lacking knowledge but they possess the same intelligence as adults.
This quote emphasizes that children's intelligence is comparable to that of adults; the key difference lies in the level of information they have acquired. It suggests that children have the potential to think and understand complex ideas, but their limited experiences and exposure prevent them from demonstrating their full intellectual capabilities.
Themes
ChildrenIntelligenceEducationKnowledgeInform
In practice
Example use cases
During a school board meeting to advocate for better educational resources.
More from Philip Pullman
All quotes →Education and health were always matters of charity. You educated children and you helped the sick because they were good things to do, not because you were going to make money out of them. If you let the money-making principle, the profit-seeking motive, anywhere near education and health, things go bad.
Philip PullmanRead
To get the best out of life here ...Good grief. There's plenty of it about, so indulge. Give yourself some thing to remember. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Gamble. Get drunk. See how long you can stay awake. Go for long walks at night. Discover what you're afraid of doing, and then do it.
Philip PullmanRead
People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.
Philip PullmanRead
I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.
Philip PullmanRead
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.
Philip PullmanRead
Similar quotes
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
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A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
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I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me feel like a human being and they gave me books that taught me English.
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Every woman needs to know when she's being discriminated against and what the reasons are why she isn't getting equal pay so we can close that pay gap.
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I see it as my job to try to make history to be a popular thing. The longer I keep going the less weird it will be to be a female historian.
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Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead