André Luiz

“Journalist Philip Gourevitch reports an interview with a Rwandan lawyer who said: “Conformity is very deep, very developed here. In Rwandan history, everyone obeys authority. People revere power, and there isn’t enough education. You take a poor, ignorant population, and give them arms, and say, ‘It’s yours. Kill.’ They’ll obey.”
― James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

“Education has benefits aside from stabilizing family incomes. Education makes individuals more polished dinner partners, for instance, something non-negligible. But the idea of educating people to improve the economy is rather novel. The British government documents, as early as fifty years ago, an aim for education other than the one we have today: raising values, making good citizens, and “learning,” not economic growth (they were not suckers at the time)—a point also made by Alison Wolf. Likewise, in ancient times, learning was for learning’s sake, to make someone a good person, worth talking to, not to increase the stock of gold in the city’s heavily guarded coffers. Entrepreneurs,”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“As I got her to explain to other people her evidence about the lack of effectiveness of funding formal education, one person got frustrated with our skepticism. Wolf’s answer to him was “real education is this,” pointing at the room full of people chatting. Accordingly, I am not saying that knowledge is not important; the skepticism in this discussion applies to the brand of commoditized, prepackaged, and pink-coated knowledge, stuff one can buy in the open market and use for self-promotion.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“In his conclusion, Zajonc maintains that he has “not encountered a single instance of massacre that was not preceded by extensive development of moral imperatives.”
― James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing