“If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one's subject matter.”
Source: 1970s, Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views (1979), p. 252-253
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Margaret Mead133
American anthropologist 1901–1978Related quotes
“A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.”
Willa Cather book The Professor's House
Book I, Ch. 4
The Professor's House (1925)
“No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.”
Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
section 24 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Cic.+Sen.+24&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0039 <br class="br">Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age (44 BC)
Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.
What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this:
This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this:
What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.
And so on.
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer
Three Years in a Curatorship, By One Whom It Has Tried, 1886
