The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
Havelock EllisRead
Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life.
Interpretation
Education serves as a protection against life's challenges and provides the necessary skills and knowledge to navigate them effectively.
In this quote, Havelock Ellis emphasizes that education is not just about acquiring information but also about preparing individuals to face the difficulties and uncertainties of life. It is a tool that equips people with both the intellectual and practical skills required to thrive in a complex world, while also protecting them from negative influences.
In practice
In a graduation speech, one could say this quote to highlight the importance of education in leading a successful and resilient life.
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
Life is livable because we know that wherever we go most of the people we meet will be restrained in their actions towards us by an almost instinctive network of taboos.
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach.
The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.
Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process.
As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.
I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.
I didn't have any idea of what I was getting into by going away to college. And I was scared. I was scared of failing. I was scared of it not being for me because I was going to be one of the first people in my family to go off to college.
We bequeath to you, the next generation, our knowledge but also our problems. While we still live, let us join hands, hearts and minds to work together for their solution so that your world will be better than ours and the world of your children even better.
From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school. That is the isolation of the school — its isolation from life.
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