Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.
Interpretation
Children should learn to navigate chaos and conflict rather than expecting a perfectly harmonious life.
Kurt Vonnegut emphasizes the importance of exposing children to the realities of life through their experiences and play. He suggests that if children become accustomed to harmony and order from their playthings, they may be unprepared for the inevitable chaos and conflicts they will face in the real world. Rather than sheltering them from difficulties, it is crucial to let them learn resilience and adaptability.
In practice
A parenting workshop emphasizing the importance of teaching children to deal with challenges.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
No one can call themselves a writer until he or she has written at least fifty stories.
Furnish an example, stop preaching, stop shielding, don't prevent self-reliance and initiative, allow your children to develop along thier own lines.
Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world.
Simply put, girls and women are the keys that will unlock sustainable development. They are also at the center of the healthier and more resilient societies we desire.
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.