“Pay attention to your students. Hear what they say, try to find out what their capacities are, what make sense to them. Adapt what you are doing and saying to those capacities, but make your students stretch upward.”

— M. H. Abrams

People's Education interview (2007)
Context: Pay attention to your students. Hear what they say, try to find out what their capacities are, what make sense to them. Adapt what you are doing and saying to those capacities, but make your students stretch upward. I think the trick is to adapt to the level of a student, but never rest on that level — always make them reach out. … If a student does not quite get it the first time, he or she will come back and get it later. If you don’t set your writing — and teaching — at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.

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M. H. Abrams 19

American literary theorist 1912–2015

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1985

“Pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, so you can pay attention to what really has your attention.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

15 September 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/114341777418354689
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“I'm a student of the movies. I'm a student of all media. This is what I do, and I like to immerse myself in what's current and what's topical. And I find that I'm drawn to those things.”

Ian Ziering (1964) American actor

'Sharknado's' Ian Ziering: 'Maybe This Is My Pulp Fiction Moment' http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sharknados-ian-ziering-maybe-is-my-pulp-fiction-moment-584659 (July 12, 2013)

“To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

“I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

“Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

“I propose that the aim of education is exactly the opposite, namely, the widening and deepening of consciousness. To the extent that education can help the student develop sensitivity, depth of perception, and above all the capacity to perceive significant forms in what he is studying, it will be developing at the same time the student's capacity to deal with anxiety constructively.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967), p. 50
Context: The overemphasis on the Baconian doctrine of knowledge as power, and the accompanying concern with gaining power over nature as well as over ourselves in the sense of treating ourself as objects to be manipulated rather than human beings whose aim is to expand in meaningful living, have resulted in the invalidation of the self. This tends to shrink the individual's consciousness, to block off his awareness, and thus play into … unconstructive anxiety … I propose that the aim of education is exactly the opposite, namely, the widening and deepening of consciousness. To the extent that education can help the student develop sensitivity, depth of perception, and above all the capacity to perceive significant forms in what he is studying, it will be developing at the same time the student's capacity to deal with anxiety constructively.

“I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Idea of God" from Essays from Epilogue (Manchester: Carcanet, 2001)

“Pay attention to your students. Hear what they say, try to find out what their capacities are, what make sense to them. Adapt what you are doing and saying to those capacities, but make your students stretch upward.”

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M. H. Abrams 19

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