Quotes on Education and Understanding

"Any purely logical thinking is frightening; it is without life, without fruit. A rational and logical person is hardly able to repent....

The essential error of the modern man is to identify life with activism, with thought, etc., hence an almost complete inability simply to 'live', i.e., to feel, to appreciate, to live life as a continuous gift. To walk to the train station in a light that feels like spring, in the rain, to be able to see, to sense, to be conscious of a morning ray of sun on the wall--all of these are the reality of life. They are not conditions for activism or for thought, they are not just an indifferent background, they are the reason one acts and thinks. Only in that reality of life does God reveal Himself, and not in acts and thoughts.... The same is true of communication. One does not communicate through talks and debates. The deeper and more joyful the communication, the less it depends on words. On the contrary, one is almost afraid of words because they might destroy the communion, cut off the joy." - Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Journals

"To educate man is the art of arts, for he is the most complex and mysterious of all creatures." - St. Gregory the Theologian

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." – Charlotte Mason

"Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind." - Cervantes, Don Quixote

"'Children,' declared still others, 'are the raw material of the future. A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy will need an army of experts and technicians to run it. Far from preparing our children for tomorrow's world, we still allow too many of them to squander years of their precious time on childish tomfoolery. It's a blot on our civilization and a crime against future generations.'

The timesavers were all in favour of such a policy, naturally, and there were so many of them in the city by this time that they soon convinced the authorities of the need to take prompt action.

Before long, big buildings known as 'child depots' sprang up in every neighbourhood. Children whose parents were too busy to look after them had to be deposited there and could be collected when convenient. They were strictly forbidden to play in the streets or parks or anywhere else. Any child caught doing so was immediately carted off to the nearest depot, and its parents were heavily fined.

None of Momo's friends escaped the new regulation. They were split up according to the districts they came from and consigned to various child depots. Once there, they were naturally forbidden to play games of their own devising. All games were selected for them by supervisors and had to have some useful, educational purpose. The children learned these new games but unlearned something else in the process: they forgot how to be happy, how to take pleasure in little things, and, last but not least, how to dream." - Michael Ende, Momo

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