Dominic > Dominic's Quotes

“Cuba will be free. I already am.”
― Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls

“Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Round House

“Nothing matters very much and most things don't matter at all.”
― Arthur Balfour

“For me, all those systematic Bureaucracies of traditional schools jaded me. For me, I still couldn’t understand why we have to have a factory style education for children living in the 21st century. Why hold them in place, asking them to read and repeat and giving them a number of tasks to finish? I still have no idea how exams and objective assessments could measure human behavior or intelligence. Is it some kind of barcoding human aptitude? Is it ethical anyway?”
― Neda Aria, Ideo: The Bitter Recipes of the Truth

“Keep those faces in mind, the little girls and boys in the early grades, all trusting the adults to show them the way, all eager and excited about life and what will come next, and then just follow those faces over time. Follow the face of a little girl who doesn't read very well and is told to try harder; who tends to daydream and is told she better pay attention; who talks out in class when she sees something fascinating, like a butterfly on the windowpane, and is told to leave the class and report to the principal; who forgets her homework and is told she will just never learn, will she; who writes a story rich in imagination and insight and is told her handwriting and spelling are atrocious; who asks for help and is told she should try harder herself before getting others to do her work for her; who begins to feel unhappy in school and is told that big girls try harder. This is the brutal process of the breaking of the spirit of a child. I can think of no more precious resource than the spirits of our children. Life necessarily breaks us all down somewhat, but to do it unnecessarily to our children in the name of educating them -- this is a tragedy. To take the joy of learning -- which one can see in any child experimenting with something new -- to take that joy and turn it into fear -- that is something we should never do.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood

“When social critics deplore the materialism of our time and its preoccupation with money, fame, and superficial values, they overlook that the driving force behind the changes we have seen -- one of the greatest periods of change in history -- has been thought. It wasn't big bucks or social status that drove this change. It was, and is, the force of the play of the mind. As materialistic as we may be, playful thinking got us here.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD

“The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. To-day I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth!”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode.”
― Don Roff

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
― Anne Lamott

“The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Disaster shocks us out of slumber, but only skillful efforts keeps us awake.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster