If you want a free society, teach your children what oppression tastes like. Tell them how many miracles it takes to get from here to there. Above all, encourage them to ask questions. Teach them to think for themselves.
Interpretation
Teaching children about oppression and critical thinking is essential for a free society.
In this quote, Jonathan Sacks emphasizes the importance of educating the younger generation not only about the harsh realities of oppression but also about the value of miracles and progress in achieving freedom. By encouraging children to think critically and ask questions, we prepare them to understand their responsibilities and the importance of safeguarding liberties in a society.
In practice
In a community meeting about educational reform, you could cite this quote to advocate for teaching critical thinking skills.
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God.
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.
Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.
From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.
We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison.
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