Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education.
Interpretation
Pay attention to wise individuals to gain knowledge and avoid the dangers of indifference.
This quote emphasizes the importance of actively listening to knowledgeable people in order to enhance oneβs education. It warns that indifference and lack of attention are significant obstacles to learning and personal growth, suggesting that being engaged and curious can lead to a richer understanding of the world.
In practice
In a motivational speech about lifelong learning.
Indeed, I suspect that the changes that have taken place during the last century in the average man's fundamental beliefs, in his philosophy, in his conception of religion, in his whole world outlook, are greater than the changes that occurred during the preceding four thousand years all put together.
Fullness of knowledge always means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance; and that is always conducive to humility and reverence.
This much I can say with definiteness - namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion - nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance.
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
The whole enterprise of teaching managers is steeped in the ethic of data-driven analytical support. The problem is, the data is only available about the past. So the way we've taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it's too late.
I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.
The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
My plea is that don't wait for a girl to become a woman to empower them. Empower a girl's life by giving sanitary pads to them. With pads, we give them wings.
For books I want to keep reading, it's definitely the voice. It must be a voice I've never heard before, and it must have its own particular intelligence. By 'voice,' I don't mean vernacular. It has to have its own particular history and world that it inhabits.
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