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Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.
Robert Anton Wilson
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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

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
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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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