
“Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #54
Athenäum (1798 - 1800)
“Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #54
Athenäum (1798 - 1800)
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it. Which means, among other things, that we behave in response to our judgements rather than to that to which is being judged. People and things are processes. Judgements convert them into fixed states. This is one reason that judgements are often self-fulfilling. If a boy, for example, is judged as being "dumb" and a "nonreader" early in his school career, that judgement sets into motion a series of teacher behaviors that cause the judgement to become self-fulfilling. What we need to do then, if we are seriously interested in helping students to become good learners, is to suspend or delay judgements about them. One manifestation of this is the ungraded elementary school. But you can practice suspending judgement yourself tomorrow. It doesn't require any major changes in anything in the school except your own behavior.
Origin unknown. Attributed to Sydney Smith in Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955) by Herbert Prochnow, p. 190. Variant reported in Why Are You Single? (1949) by Hilda Holland, p. 49: «When asked by a young man whether to marry, Socrates is said to have replied: "By all means, marry. If you will get for yourself a good wife, you will be happy forever after; and if by chance you will get a common scold like my Xanthippe—why then you will become a philosopher."»
Misattributed
Variant: By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
The Big Picture, 1996
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 125]
A New Earth (2005)
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose