SEGMENTING LIFEGAME = BULLSHIT “It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”

WHAT IS SCHOOL FOR?

• “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
• “Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.”
• “The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown… The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers.”

GETTING SHIT DONE:

• “We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.”
• “Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals. “
• “If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.”

CONTRIBUTE:

• “I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”
• “I measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her fellow human beings.”

LEARNING BY COMPARISON: “As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”

AFTERLIFE: “It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly. ”

I agree with pretty much all of her views and ideas. I am now desperately looking for her books. It never fails to amaze me how much wisdom there is to be found from thinkers of the past, and it saddens me to realise that they simply didn’t have the opportunity to witness the changes that their thoughts and ideas would contribute to.