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
Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True understanding comes from personal experience and effort, not merely from being taught.
This quote emphasizes the idea that knowledge and important lessons are not simply imparted by teachers, but rather they must be actively pursued and earned through personal struggle and commitment. It suggests that real learning requires hard work and may involve significant challenges, often symbolized by 'blood and sweat'.
Themes
LearningEducationEffortExperienceKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a commencement speech, to inspire graduates to take charge of their own learning.
More from Robert Anton Wilson
All quotes βThere 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.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
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.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
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.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
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).
Robert Anton WilsonRead
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The essence of education is not to transfer knowledge; it is to guide the learning process, to put responsibility for study in the student's own hands...[and] place people on their own path of discovery and invention.
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Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. βYouβre my sacred ones,β I told the books. βNo one but me still cares about you. But Iβm going to keep you with me forever. And one day Iβll make you important again.β I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.
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My first program taught me a lot about the errors that I was going to be making in the future, and also about how to find errors. That's sort of the story of my life, making errors and trying to recover from them. I try to get things correct. I probably obsess about not making too many mistakes.
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When schools flourish, all flourishes.
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Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.
Michael Eric DysonRead