Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a solitary boat floating in a sea of possible companions.
It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the priorities of society, suggesting that education should be funded as a priority over military spending.
Robert Fulghum's quote draws attention to the discrepancies in funding between essential public services, such as education, and military expenditures. It paints a vivid image of an ideal world where schools are sufficiently funded, illustrating the importance of education in society, while implying that military needs could be met through community efforts like bake sales, thus promoting a re-evaluation of societal values and priorities.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a school board meeting to advocate for increased funding for education.
More from Robert Fulghum
All quotes βIf dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But, they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them weeds and murder them at every opportunity
Weβre all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness β and call it love β true love.
Peace is not something you wish for, it's something you make
Doing a straight-forward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity.
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
Similar quotes
It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things are learned, but not really taught at all. Over-teaching interferes with learning, although the few who survive it may well come to imagine it was by an act of teaching.
Experiment! Meet new people. Thatβs better than any college education . . . By adventuring; about, you become accustomed to the unexpected. The unexpected then becomes what it really is . . . the inevitable.
The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.
The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.
All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.
Once you've got a child to the point that they've discovered books, they're safe. There's a world of the imagination that when they're hurt or upset, they can move into, and it is wonderful.