Quote of the Day -- Thomas Sowell

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

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According to Wikipedia, Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Sowell has written more than thirty books, and is a National Humanities Medal recipient for innovative scholarship which incorporated history, economics, and political science. Sadly, I had never heard of him until I encountered this quote.

Quote of the Day -- David Foster Wallace

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

-- David Foster Wallace

Quote of the Day -- Adam Grant

A sign of intellect is the ability to change your mind in the face of new facts. 

A mark of wisdom is refusing to let the fear of admitting you were wrong stop you from getting it right. 

The joy of learning something new eventually exceeds the pain of unlearning something old.

-- Adam Grant

Quote of the Day -- Walter Landor

Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.

-- Walter Landor

Quote of the Day -- Carl Sagan

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.

-- Carl Sagan

Quote of the Day

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

-- variously attributed to Einstein, Aesop's Fables, and other sources

Quote of the Day -- Barbara Tuchman

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

-- Barbara Tuchman

Quote of the Day -- John Maynard Keynes

The difficulty lies not in grasping the new ideas, but rather in escaping from the old ones.

-- John Maynard Keynes

Quote of the Day -- W.E.B. Du Bois

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

-- W.E.B. Du Bois

Quote of the Day -- Richard Hamming

Teachers should prepare the student for the student's future, not for the teacher's past.

-- Richard Hamming

Quote of the Day -- Marie Curie

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

-- Marie Curie

Quote of the Day -- John Gardner

There's a myth that learning is for young people. But as the proverb says, 'It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.' The middle years are great, great learning years. Even the years past the middle years. I took on a new job after my 77th birthday – and I'm still learning. Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes, When you hit a spell of trouble, ask 'What is it trying to teach me?' The lessons aren't always happy ones, but they keep coming.

-- John Gardner

Quote of the Day -- Isaac Asimov

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

-- Isaac Asimov

Quote of the Day -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

 -Jiddu Krishnamurti

Quote of the Day -- Octavia Butler

As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent.

-- Octavia Butler

Quote of the Day -- James Clear

Learning is a marathon and perfection is a weighted vest.

-- James Clear

Quote of the Day -- Hannah Arendt

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token to save it from that ruin, which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. An education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their choice of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. 

-- Hannah Arendt

Quote of the Day -- Albert Einstein

Information is not knowledge.

― Albert Einstein

Quote of the Day -- Kevin Kelly

A good question is not concerned with a correct answer. A good question cannot be answered immediately. A good question challenges existing answers. A good question is one you badly want answered once you hear it, but had no inkling you cared before it was asked. A good question creates new territory of thinking. A good question reframes its own answers. A good question is the seed of innovation in science, technology, art, politics, and business. A good question is a probe, a what-if scenario. A good question skirts on the edge of what is known and not known, neither silly nor obvious. A good question cannot be predicted. A good question will be the sign of an educated mind. A good question is one that generates many other good questions. A good question may be the last job a machine will learn to do. A good question is what humans are for. 

-- Kevin Kelly

Quote of the Day -- Carol Tavris

The scientific method is designed to help investigators overcome the most entrenched human cognitive habit: the confirmation bias, the tendency to notice and remember evidence that confirms our beliefs or decisions, and to ignore, dismiss, or forget evidence that is discrepant. That's why we are all inclined to stick to a hypothesis we believe in. Science is one way of forcing us, kicking and screaming if necessary, to modify our views. 

-- Carol Tavris