"The reward for a job well done is to have done it." EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory."
GANDHI, MAHATMA, 1869-1948
"The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it."
JONES, FRANKLIN P
"A friend is someone who knows all about you, and likes you anyway." UNKNOWN
Education
“Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes any more that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.”
GATTO, JOHN TAYLOR, New York State Teacher of the Year 1991 (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 41)
“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners…” (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 53)
“Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how.” (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 45)
HOLT, JOHN
“The one thing I didn’t do at school was learn.” (pg. 41)
“Without it [school] you learn more in less time. I get to learn instead of sitting with my head down.” (pg. 42)
LESCALLEET, JASON, 14-year-old unschooler (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook)
“Being in school is like being incredibly hungry and sitting at Burger King eating too much, too fast to be satisfied, and then puking it up.”
LLEWELLYN, GRACE (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 49)
“Giving grades puts the wrong focus on learning. It points a student toward competition and learning for the wrong reasons: to make grades rather than to become educated.”
MEEHAN, PATRICK, A 14-year-old unschooler (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 48)
What OPPENHEIMER, FRANK (a physicist) said about learning without grades.
‘People built fires to keep warm long before Galileo invented the thermometer” (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 46)
“Forcing a familiar school-type approach at home is like forcing bougainvillea to bloom in Alaska.”
PATTERSON, SUE
“Comparing me to those who are conventionally schooled is like comparing the freedoms of a wild horse to that of cattle in a feedlot.”
ROCH, COLIN, 12-year-old unschooler (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 32)
What SELLSTROM, KEVIN (14-year-old unschooler) said when asked about what he thinks the knowledge of unschoolers is compared to those who go to school.
“Far superior. More knowledgeable in most subjects, including common sense.” (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 42)
“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me form being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.”
SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 41)
“Education is a private matter and has little to do with school or college.”
SMITH, LILLIAN
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead."
STEVENSON, ADLAI
“If any tax gatherer, or any other public officer , asks me, as one has done, ‘But what shall I do?’ my answer is, ‘If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.’ When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.’
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 25)
“Never let school interfere with your learning.”
TWAIN, MARK
"Education is an amirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught."
WILDE, OSCAR
"A mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains it's original dimensions."
UNKNOWN
“You can spend your time and energy doing things you like”
“Not being forced to do certain uninteresting subjects. Not sitting around for six hours doing something don’t like.”
“Having time to do what I want.”
“I feel sorry for the kids who have to go to ‘prison’ for 6-8- hours a day. I felt like we were the victims of a mass production enterprise.”
“Time, time, time. I have my life back for my own use. I am no longer having to wait and wait and wait for everyone else. I can concentrate on what I want to learn. I can work on my computer as long as I like. Or if I want to spend a lot of time diagramming sentences one day and not at all for two days, its’ all right. Also we can travel and be in general control our own lives! It’s great!”
“I’m free!”
ANAYMOUS UNSCHOOLERS (from The Teenage Liberation Handbook pg. 39 & 40)
God
Frusterated by the quantum universe, EINSTIEN was quoted as saying, "God does not play dice with the universe." His friend, Hans Bethe, replied: "Albert, stop telling God what to do."
Hope
"Resolve to create a good future. It's is where you'll spend the rest of your life."
KETTERING, CHARLES FRANKLIN
Humans
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
EINSTEIN, ALBERT
"Ugly giant bag of mostly water..."
The Microbrain, reffering to humans, TNG "Homesoil"
Knowledge
"What we have learned
Is like a handfull of earth
What we have yet to learn
Is like the whole world."
AVVAIYAR
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
"To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire feild of millet, only one grain will grow."
Metrodorus of Chios (4th Century B.C.)
"Thinking is very far from knowing."
PROVERB
"Nothing happens in contradiction to nature. Only in contradiction to what we know of it."
SCULLY, DANA, "Herrenvolk" X-files
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
THURBER, JAMES
Life
"There are two ways to live life: As if nothing is a miracle, and as if everything is a miracle."
EINSTEIN, ALBERT
"A person should live forever, or die trying"
ROBINSON, SPIDER
"I like life. It's something to do."
SHAKES, RONNIE
"Some things are true wheather you belive them or not."
STETH, "City of Angles"
"Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead."
THURBER, JAMES
"Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition."
TIMOTHY LEARY
"The whole point of life is to learn and have fun, unless it has something to do with taxes or death."
WELCH, MICHAEL
"If they could put one man on the moon, why can't they put them all?"
UNKNOWN
"Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things."
UNKNOWN
"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."
UNKNOWN
"Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?"
UNKNOWN
Music
"What I have in my heart and soul - must find a way out. That is the reason for music..."
-BEETHOVEN
"Music gives a soul to the universe."
-PLATO
Philosophy
"Some things have to be belived to be seen."
HODGSON, RALPH, on ESP
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty."
KEAT
"The earth has been rotating in space for several-billion years now. Yet it has been said that if the whole history of our planet could be condensed into one calendar year, man would not appear until 10:30pm on December 31st. And "science" -- the household god of the twentieth century -- would not surface until the last second of our calendar. Isn't it strange that on the basis of such limited experience we have decided that the future is ours?"
MATRE, STEVE VAN, author of Earth Education... A New Beginning
"We seek the truth, and will endure the consequences."
SEYMOUR, CHARLES
"Tell the truth and you never have to remember anything."
TWAIN, MARK
Politics/Government
"No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office."
BAILEY, COVERT
"How much money did you make last year? Send it in."
DELAPLANE, STANTON; Simplified tax form suggested
"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."
DINKINS, DAVID; Former Mayor of New York City, while answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.
"What luck for rulers that men do not think."
HITLER, ADOLF
"That's what governments are there for, to keep good things from happening."
QUINN, DANIEL from his book My Ishmael , page 212
Satire
"If I ever need a brain transplant, I'd choose a sportswriter because I'd want a brain that had never been used."
BROCKLIN, NORM VAN
"I haven't been wrong since 1961, when I thought I made a mistake."
BOB HUSON
Science
"What's the difference between scientists and doctors? And don't say salary."
ADAMS, PATCH
"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
EDISON, THOMAS ALVA
"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
EINSTEIN, ALBERT
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons."
POPULAR MECHANICS, March 1949
"Get it right, you're a star. Get it half-right, you're a gas giant."
ROBINSON, SPIDER