We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
R. D. LaingRead
Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that society often negatively influences the natural intelligence of children, turning them into less capable adults despite high IQs.
R. D. Laing's quote reflects a critical viewpoint on how societal norms and educational systems can stifle the innate potential and wisdom of children. It implies that rather than nurturing their natural curiosity and intelligence, we often impose limitations and conformist thinking, resulting in individuals who may excel academically yet lack true understanding and creativity.
In practice
In a speech about the education system, one might use this quote to highlight the flaws in how we educate children.
We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.
The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.
His Son Jesus, the Word of God, is our Instructor.... He is God and Creator.
My parents would say to me, 'You can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you.' That was the whole ethos of my family.
Play is really the work of childhood.
We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.
The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subjects really matter, for the sake of attracting money and prestige in a world obsessed by the achievements of science.
You want people to be eager for your book; the downside is when the people forget the series even exists.
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