goodlife
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Food for thought...
Rory: i don't feel like i've been wanting something to fight for, all this time. that would imply that i am naturally prone to fighting. maybe I am... i hope not. I think that i've been struggling for a long time trying to make sense of this whole highschool thing... and finally it became apparant to me that we are each complete and whole and good beings... we just need to learn to be ourselves and not let anyone else try to screw with it. and thats what i'm trying to do. that brings me into conflict with the school... so be it
Aaron: by fighting i didn't particularly mean battle, i think. i was leaning more towards a quest sort of idea. searching to find who you are amidst all these things they make us go through each day, like machinery. and we're used to being machines but we all want more out of life. and so i was meaning that you've been fighting to find yourself and what you really want and school is indeed getting in the way of it. and now they won't admit that they're being foolish about certain aspects of things so you're getting out of the loop to prove yourself, your worth and to prove them wrong.
Rory: i have qualms with making it a "rebellion" or a "revolution".... i think "movement" is okay. i like to see it as being happy and living rightly and doing what is necessary and being myself no matter what. i want to make it more than "rory vs. mr. mead". i think it is more than that. it has that element (it's sort of inevitable that it have that element) but i want it to be "people living", "people smiling"...
Aaron: it's more than just one person. it's more than just him and you.
Rory: the real issue to me is that these things that I'm doing should never be an issue. they're silly obvious things. its trying to be oneself, do ones work
Aaron: exactly
Rory: come to class prepared, have my viola after school, breathe, smile, carry a hat.
Aaron: carry a goddamn hat indeed
Rory: and thats what i want this "movement" to embody. not "taking down the system" but "being yourself and doing what's right at all costs even if it contradicts 'the system' and everything that that represents."
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." - Nietzsche
"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly." - Albert Einstein
"The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately... education produces no effect whatsoever." - Oscar Wilde
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. " - Thomas Jefferson
"I've sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. "
- Thomas Jefferson
"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." - George Bernard Shaw
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. " - Samuel Adams
"We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the constitution. " - Abraham Lincoln
"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, and brutal violations of common sense and common decency." - H.L. Mencken
"It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." - Benjamin Disraeli
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." - Noah Webster
"Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself." - Chief Joseph Nez Perce
"Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right." Henry David Thoreau
"It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity." Benito Mussolini ("The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism")
"How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. " - Alexander Dumas
"There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough - the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not. " - Floyd Dell
"Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence." - Albert Wiggam
"We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go... If you don't like what you are doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out." - Timothy Leary
"This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right." - Ralph Emerson
"That man is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot
"Education is a sexual disease, it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you have the urge to pass it on." - Terry Pratchett
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
"...not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought." - William Channing
"I learn by going where I have to go." - Theodore Roethke
"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. " - Kurt Vonnegut
"You can't shoot an idea." - Thomas E. Dewey
"When teaching, light a fire, don't fill a bucket" - Dan Snow
"To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting..." - E.E. Cummings
"It is not the critic who counts; Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; Who strives valiantly; Who errs, and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; But who does actually strive to do the deeds; Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; Who spends himself in a worthy cause; Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worse, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Ghandi
"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth." - Plato
"Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The sigularity of every man and woman is Jah's gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth." - Bob Marley
"The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. " - Thomas Paine
"If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." - Anthony Burgess
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." - Henry David Thoreau
"It is the path of least resistance that makes rivers and men crooked." - B.J. Palmer
"If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that." - Goethe
"Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right." - Isaac Asimov
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
why is this so hard for me? I don't know. but every thread of soul and being and worn-through cotton-fabric spirit seems united in renouncing this life and place and circumstance. could I kill for someone else's idea of order and goodness? then how can I live for it? be true to yourself. be what you are, think what you think, do what you do. people are good and the world is beautiful. let yourself be good. let the world be beautiful. don't let anyone stop you, or it, or life. don't take no for an answer. don't say yes and mean maybe. don't pretend. be. and be. and be. if they change you it is because you let them. if you let them you will be lost in a personality which is not yours, and you will never understand a step you take or a word you speak, and the stirrings of your weak heart will always sound strange and make you lonely and upset. be and don't be ashamed. live and don't ask for permission. God is the only one in a position to judge you and he will understand, I promise.
