Freedom begins with what we teach our children. That is why Jews became a people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers and whose citadels are schools.
Interpretation
Teaching children is the first step toward freedom and a better future.
This quote emphasizes the vital role of education in achieving freedom and shaping a society. Jonathan Sacks suggests that by prioritizing education and valuing teachers, communities can empower their children, ensuring a legacy of knowledge and enlightenment that fosters growth and resilience against oppression.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of educational reform, one could use this quote to highlight how foundational education is to societal development.
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.
I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.
What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesnβt matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if itβs thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
I grew up at a time in Hawaii where there were trans women around, so there were visible role models for me. At the same time, as a low-income trans girl of color, there were so many things that I didn't have access to. I didn't have access to a great education. I didn't have access to affordable healthcare.
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
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