Adam Kempiński

“Men trained under Dr Keate and similar pedagogues made our England what it is, and extended the blessings of our civilisation to the benighted heathen in India and Africa. I do not wish to belittle this achievement, and I am not sure that it would have been possible by any other method with the same economy of effort. Its products, owing to a certain Spartan toughness and to a complete incapacity for intellectual doubt, acquired the qualities needed by an imperial race among the backward peoples. They were able to pass on the stern rule to which they had been subjected in youth, and to avoid the realisation that what they supposed to be their education had starved the intelligence and the emotions in order to strengthen the will. In America a similar result was achieved by Puritanism while it remained vigorous.”
― Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order

“Reason is the slave of passion.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground