“It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons.”
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)
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William L. Shirer 35
American journalist 1904–1993Related quotes
“One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.”
Source: Sufi Thought and Action
Source: Literature and Revolution (1924)
“In living, one learns how to read. (How, and with what result.)”
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
Source: The impossible dream https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/business/the-impossible-dream/article_9f89419a-976d-520e-a2bc-844d245bbdc2.html (June 27, 2015)
As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) by James Beasley Simpson; also quoted in Running on Empty: Meditations for Indispensable Women (1992) by Ellen Sue Stern, p. 235
Paraphrased variants: The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
Take your work seriously, but never yourself.
From Cosmic Religion: with Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931), Albert Einstein, pub. Covici-Friede. Quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208, ISBN 0691070210
1930s