Hard Candy

“We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.”
― Alain De Botton, On Love

“An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.”
― Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three

“She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

“I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling