“What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?”
Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 212
Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger (May 21, 2009)
Context: The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience.I think many people have that enthusiasm, but they are prevented from being teachers because they didn't go through the teacher mill. Now you have teachers who have been through the teacher mill, yet they have no capacity to inspire anyone at all. It's the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That's what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.
“What underlies our assignment of probabilities in the real world?”
Source: Think (1999), Chapter Six, Reasoning, p. 212
Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 19
“God's commandment is that those who serve Him must separate themselves from the world.”
Source: Separation from the World, p. 4
[The Case against Education, 13, https://books.google.com/books?id=Mws8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA13]
The Case against Education (2018)
“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action”
Address to Congress resigning his commission (23 December 1783)
1780s
Context: Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.
“There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.”
The Voice of the Scholar (San Francisco, 1903), Ch. IX: "The University and the Common Man", p. 190 https://archive.org/stream/voiceofscholarwi00jorduoft#page/190/mode/2up
"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)