We worship education but hate learning. We worship success but hate the successful. We worship fame but hate the famous.
Interpretation
The quote highlights a contradiction in society where people admire concepts like education, success, and fame, yet have disdain for the actual processes and individuals that achieve them.
Florence King's quote critiques societal values by pointing out the hypocrisy in how people revere education, success, and fame while simultaneously harboring negative feelings towards the learning process and the individuals who embody these achievements. It reflects a disconnect between admiration for concepts and the appreciation of the hard work and challenges faced by those who attain them, prompting a reflection on our true values and the reality of achievement.
In practice
During a graduation speech, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of valuing the process of education over just the accolades.
Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.
Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.
Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.
I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.
The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self- education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.
May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.
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