“When Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages from the Spartans, they offered him, in their stead, a hundred men of distinction; unlike ordinary educators, who precisely reverse the offering. The Spartans thought rightly and nobly. In the world of childhood all posterity stands before us, upon which we, like Moses upon the promised land, may only gaze, but not enter.”

— Jean Paul

Jean-Paul Richter, Levana; or, The Doctrine of Education https://archive.org/details/levanaordoctrine02jean 1807 1865 translation p. 1

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Jean Paul 16

German novelist 1763–1825

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“At one time the Spartans were capable of such a wise measure, but not our present, mendaciously sentimental, bourgeois patriotic nonsense. The rule of six thousand Spartans over three hundred and fifty thousand Helots was only thinkable in consequence of the high racial value of the Spartans. But this was the result of a systematic race preservation; thus Sparta must be regarded as the first Völkisch State. The exposure of sick, weak, deformed children, in short their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more humane than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject, and indeed at any price, and yet takes the life of a hundred thousand healthy children in consequence of birth control or through abortions, in order subsequently to breed a race of degenerates burdened with illnesses.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

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“Any casual observer of humankind will have been struck by the incongruity with which we may lavish great passion upon the trivial, the frivolous, and the ephemeral or upon collective crusades to which, suddenly and with little reason or reflection, we sacrifice everything. When ordinary men and women, living in the ordinary situations society offers them, move beyond the domain of their most intimate personal relations, they often find little to deserve their surviving intensity—little other than the great historical storms that occasionally sweep them up or fanciful individual escapes that remain disconnected from their daily lives…. A program like the one outlined here remains united to the cause of progressive thought by its emphasis upon the liberation of ordinary people from drudgery and humiliation.”

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“You have given the great honour … to hundreds of millions of children in the world who are deprived of their childhood and health and education, and fundamental right to freedom. It is a great moment for all those children.”

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Context: You have given the great honour … to hundreds of millions of children in the world who are deprived of their childhood and health and education, and fundamental right to freedom. It is a great moment for all those children. … I am quite hopeful and rather sure that this will help in giving bigger visibility and attention to the cause of children who are most neglected and most deprived. This will also inspire individuals, activists, governments, business houses, corporate to work hand in hand to fight this out. And I am quite hopeful about it, that the recognition of this issue will help in mobilising bigger support for the cause.

“The Spartans weren't to be led
and ordered around
like precious servants.”

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" In The Year 200 B.C. http://cavafis.compupress.gr/kave_1.htm" (1931)
Context: The Spartans weren't to be led
and ordered around
like precious servants. Besides,
they wouldn't have thought a pan-Hellenic expedition
without a Spartan king in command
was to be taken very seriously.
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Letter to Mr. J.C. Martin concerning religion and politics (6 November 1908) http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/307.txt

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Sec. 121
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“If at all God's gaze falls upon us all it's with a mischievous grin, look at him.”

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Jean Paul 16

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