“To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Adversus Valentinianos (Against the Valentinians), 1.4
“To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian
"Reasons to De-Test the Schools," New York Times (1988-10-11), later published in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991)
Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) German Jewish philosopher and theologian
The one abandons the disobedient and expels him; the other receives him in its bosom and seeks to instruct, or at least to console him.
Source: Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783), p. 45
“It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.”
Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Variant: It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.
Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), P. 92
“The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”
Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris
La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas.
XXIX: "Le Joueur généreux"; The devil describes having heard this statement made by a Parisian preacher
Paraphrased in The Usual Suspects as "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Le Spleen de Paris (1862)
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
Introduction to Fortune, My Foe and Eros at Breakfast (c. 1993).
Context: The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 14.
Shunryu Suzuki book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Part 4, No. 1. "Transiency"
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1973)
“Much learning does not teach understanding.”
Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
Fragment 40
Numbered fragments