Education

"The shackles of mental control, perceptual filtering and cultural conditioning are harder to throw off today than ever before. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever seen. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our entire consciousness seems to be subtly and relentlessly erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely controlled. It is an exhaustive and endless task to constantly explain to people how most things of their everyday wisdom are scientifically planted in the public consciousness via a thousand media clips." Dr. Tim O’Shea

"Learning is like rowing against the current. As soon as you stop, you drift back." Edward Benjamin Britten

"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." Epiktet

"Do we even need these demotivated, disillusioned secondary school dropouts for growth? No! Every DAX corporation proves in its quarterly report that the fewer of such poorly qualified people they have, the greater the growth. No, we only need them as consumers. And if we only need them as consumers, then a fair amount of stupidity can only be helpful. Maybe we are breeding them! Just think about it for a moment, then all the contradictions dissolve; although the anger grows even greater, the intellectual confusion subsides! […] And what does that mean in a country where poverty is currently exploding? That they are breeding a solid class of idiots. […] Also, the consumer centers, maybe even in your federal state, are having their funds cut. Not a wrong decision either. Why? Well, the rabble shouldn't think, hesitate, or compare. They should buy the first piece of rubbish offered during the commercial break. […] We need idiots; otherwise no one would eat spoiled meat." Georg Schramm

"You cannot study physics at any university anywhere in the world, because everything taught there is half disproven and half irrelevant. The relevant physics only takes place behind the closed doors of the labs in the arms and industrial sectors. The researchers working there use laws of nature that are unknown to university professors." Robert Betts Laughlin

"Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind; it forces you to stretch your own." Charles Scribner

"Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life." Charles Scribner

"The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda." Edward Bernays

"We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception." Walter Lippmann

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. Learning never exhausts the mind. Art is never finished, only abandoned. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. Water is the driving force of all nature.”" Leonardo da Vinci

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." Aristoteles

"Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed." John D. Rockefeller

"Not knowing is no shame — but refusing to learn is." Sokrates

"If we fail to find any of this—even at the highest energies we can reach—then we’ll have to do some serious rethinking and essentially start over from scratch. Which, of course, is exciting in its own way. Science is always exciting: if you don’t find anything, you simply have to come up with something new. Imagination is always the foundation of science." Wolfram Zeuner