“Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.”

— Philip Pullman

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Philip Pullman 161

English author 1946

Max Lerner (1902–1992) American journalist and educator

Quoted in Max Lerner, Writer, 89, Is Dead; Humanist on Political Barricades By Richard Severo, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/06/arts/max-lerner-writer-89-is-dead-humanist-on-political-barricades.html (6 June 1992)

“Women must earn less than men because they are weaker, smaller and less intelligent. They must earn less, that's all.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: EU Parliament, 03 March 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNs_nn_qBIQ

“You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to some degree converting them into will-less adults.”

A.S. Neill book Summerhill

Source: Summerhill (1960), p. 12
Context: You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to some degree converting them into will-less adults. You fashion them into accepters of the status quo – a good thing for a society that needs obedient sitters at dreary desks, standers in shops, mechanical catchers of the 8:30 suburban train – a society, in short, that is carried on the shabby shoulders of the scared little man – the scared-to-death conformist.

“When I was young, I thought the act of getting older meant, year by year, getting more sophisticated, more hard, cool, and unpitying. Less innocent.
Maybe that was a childish idea of what getting older was about. Maybe adults, mature adults, get more innocent with time, not less. Because the word “innocent” does not mean “naïve,” it means “not guilty.”
Children do small evils to each other, schoolyard fights and insults, not because their hearts are pure, but because their powers are small. Grownups have more power. Some of them do great evils with that power. But what about the ones who don’t? Aren’t they more innocent than children, not less?”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 12, “North by Northwest” (p. 181)

“With respect to those meanings of "human" that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/311774201012948992 (13 March 2013)
Twitter

“That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

§ 4.8
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

“The publishing world tends to focus more on the “young”, less on the “adult.””

Juno Dawson (1981) British youth fiction author

But I spend lots of time with teenagers and they’re truly the broadband generation. They’ve been online all their lives and seen things that would make milk curdle: beheadings, graphic violence, hardcore porn. Shielding them is never going to work. What makes this book YA is that it tackles issues in a non-judgmental way. We know these things exist, so let’s talk about them…

On why her young adult novel Clean contains drugs, sex and swearing in “Juno Dawson: ‘Teenagers have seen things that would make milk curdle’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/01/juno-dawson-clean-interview-transgender-anorexia-drugs in The Guardian (2018 Apr 1)

“Darwin believed that women were not as competent as men, and less intelligent than men, but they were better than a dog.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

“We will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

“Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.”

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