My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
How many times... have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens inward. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that learning occurs when the learner is prepared to receive knowledge.
This quote by Robert Anton Wilson suggests that true learning and understanding come when an individual is mentally and emotionally ready. It highlights the importance of the student's mindset in the educational process, implying that knowledge and guidance are always available ('the Master is everywhere'), but the student must be open and receptive to truly absorb and benefit from it.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students to embrace learning.
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
It is personal. That's what an education does. It makes the world personal.
The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.
It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.
Writing/reading is like visiting another person's brain. And a short book or article is like a short stay. You come in, have a coffee, talk about the weather or sports, and then move on.
The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.
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