There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Interpretation
Reading can be driven by enjoyment or the desire to impress others.
This quote by Bertrand Russell highlights the dual motives behind reading books. On one hand, it emphasizes the intrinsic pleasure and enjoyment that comes from engaging with a good book; on the other hand, it critiques the tendency of some readers to choose books not for personal enjoyment, but to enhance their social status by showcasing their literary knowledge or interests. This observation opens a discussion about the true purpose of reading and the motivations behind our engagement with literature.
In practice
In a book club discussion to highlight the importance of reading for pleasure.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.
Creating a world that is truly fit for children does not imply simply the absence of war... It means having primary schools nearby that educate children, free of charge... It means building a world fit for children, where every child can grow to adulthood in health, peace and dignity.
Service-learning is a particularly fertile way of involving young people in community service, because it ties helping others to what they are learning in the classroom. It enables them to apply academic disciplines to practical, everyday problems. In the process, it provides a compelling answer to the adolescent's perennial question, 'Why do I need to learn this stuff?
It is commonly said that a teacher fails if he has not been surpassed by his students. There has been no failure on our part in this regard considering how far they have gone.
When the average child is now spending nearly eight hours a day in front of some kind of screen, many of their opinions and preferences are being shaped by the marketing campaigns you all create. And thatβs where the problem comes in.. ... And Iβm here today with one simple request - and that is to do even more and move even faster to market responsibly to our kids.
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