For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Interpretation
The mind should be inspired and encouraged to think critically rather than just filled with information.
In this quote by Plutarch, he suggests that the mind is not merely a container for facts but rather a dynamic entity that requires stimulation and inspiration to reach its full potential. The analogy of wood needing ignition implies that the best learning occurs when individuals are motivated to explore, question, and engage actively with knowledge rather than passively absorbing it.
In practice
This quote can be used in a classroom setting to encourage students to think creatively.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
Learning is acquired by reading books; much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.
You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.
There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.
The education of youth, an employment of more consequence than making laws and preaching the gospel, because it lays the foundation on which both law and gospel rest for success.
In education, we are striving not to teach youth to make a living, but to make a life.
We need to get to kids who have no idea what we do. We need to open the doors wide and let them in. There are many undiscovered voices out there - voices that, against all odds, can rise up and enrich this culture and perhaps change the very nature of the marketplace for the better.
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