“Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders”
1910s, A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
Context: A nation should always be healthily rebellious; but the king or prime minister has yet to be found who will make trouble by cultivating that side of the national spirit. A child should begin to assert itself early, and shift for itself more and more not only in washing and dressing itself, but in opinions and conduct; yet as nothing is so exasperating and so unlovable as an uppish child, it is useless to expect parents and schoolmasters to inculcate this uppishness. Such unamiable precepts as Always contradict an authoritative statement, Always return a blow, Never lose a chance of a good fight, When you are scolded for a mistake ask the person who scolds you whether he or she supposes you did it on purpose, and follow the question with a blow or an insult or some other unmistakable expression of resentment, Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders, are just as important as those of The Sermon on the Mount; but no one has yet seen them written up in letters of gold in a schoolroom or nursery.
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George Bernard Shaw 413
Irish playwright 1856–1950Related quotes
Steven Keith (December 26, 2007) "The Food Guy Food, how do I love thee?", Charleston Daily Mail, p. P1D.
Attributed
[Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart, Guy, John, 2005, Mariner Books, 0618619178]
“It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.”
Source: Dust & Decay
“Don't gain the world and lose your soul
Wisdom is better than silver and gold.”
Zion Train
Uprising (1979)
Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy
Context: There has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against us at their coming; and much they got by it after all. Troth, we e'en fitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big and so grum.
Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking, disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?
Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
Letters and essays
Context: Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
“Teach your tongue to say "I do not know" and you will progress.”
This is actually from the Talmud (Tractate Berachot 4a)
Misattributed
"On Knowledge of the World"
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)