Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
—Richard Feynman
When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be surprised to learn they're not it.
—Bernard Bailey
The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. That is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be easily measured really isn't very important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured doesn't exist. This is suicide.
—Daniel Yankelovich
School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
—Ivan Illich
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization presumably would flunk it.
—Stanley Marion Garn
We think work with the brain is more worthy than work with the hands. Nobody who thinks with his hands could ever fall for this.
—E. F. Schumacher
School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn.
—Tillie Olsen
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
—Mother Teresa
Independence? That's a middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
—George Bernard Shaw
We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than just observes. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve.
—Dorothe Sölle
He whose belly is full believes not him whose belly is empty.
—Thomas Fuller
Work went on monotonously, and our constant hunger was wrenching. Rice powder and bran, which I sometimes roasted in an attempt to give it some flavor, had torn my insides to shreds. One morning I didn't have the strength to get up, and no one came to see what had happened to me. Everyone was so used to having people just disappear.
—Molyda Szymusiak
People who consider themselves so different from their named enemies should plant a crop and work a field together. During the labor, they would talk about children and find the common ground of parenting. At the harvest, they would hold cooperation in their hands as they offer up with pride a melon or squash.… Has the society of human beings become too complex to realize such simplicity?
—Booker Jones
Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing, and dancing sooner than of war.
—Homer
To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and leisure. Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was "peace" and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war.
—Thomas Merton