Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are often less made use of as "spectacles" to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.
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Seneca on the Requirement of Usefulness
What is required, you see, of any man is that he should be of use to other men—if possible, to many; failing that, to a few; failing that, to those nearest him; failing that, to himself.
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Tolstoy on the Danger of Propriety
“Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred to him. “But how could that be, when I did everything properly?” he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.
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Guardini on the Autonomous Path to the Machine
Machines are certainly created by people, but the path to them leads by way of such radical changes that the result for the living feelings of those who use them is that the machines seem to be strange and autonomous.
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Eliot on Education and Social Ideals
What we remark especially about the educational thought of the last few years, is the enthusiasm with which education has been taken up as an instrument for the realisation of social ideals. It would be a pity if we overlooked the possibilities of education as a means of acquiring wisdom; if we belittled the acquisition of knowledge for the satisfaction of curiosity, without any further motive than the desire to know; and if we lost our respect for learning.