Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are for students. Questions are for thinkers.
Roger SchankRead
Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans prefer comprehending information through narratives rather than abstract reasoning.
This quote emphasizes the idea that storytelling is a natural way for humans to make sense of the world. It suggests that while logic is important, our brains are wired to respond better to stories, which engage our emotions and imagination, making them powerful tools for teaching and communication.
Themes
StorytellingUnderstandingNarrativeEducationLogicCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
A teacher might use this quote to highlight the importance of storytelling in lessons.
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I read once, which I loved so much, that this great physicist who won a Nobel Prize said that every day when he got home, his dad asked him not what he learned in school but his dad said, 'Did you ask any great questions today?' And I always thought, what a beautiful way to educate kids that we're excited by their questions, not by our answers and whether they can repeat our answers.
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But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.
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The enemies of a people are those who keep them in ignorance.
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Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose at your elbow, but it's not so much rereading as re-dusting. Then one day you pick it up, take notice of the contents; your inner life realigns.
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Perfect health, sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches.
Sri AurobindoRead