213 ratings (3.39 avg)
3 reviews

Ben Burdick

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Ben’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (12)

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read‎ (214)

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Ben’s Quotes

“Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

tags: human-condition, isolation

28 likes

“There is no power but in conviction.”
― François-René de Chateaubriand, Génie Du Christianisme, 1

tags: conviction, power

8 likes

“We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we're willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won't admit that either, but it's true.”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

tags: coming-of-age, depression, hypocrisy, isolation-loneliness, teen-angst

13 likes

“Illusions fall away one after another like the husks of a fruit, and that fruit is experience. It is bitter to the taste, but there is fortitude to be found in gall – forgive me my old-fashioned turns of phrase.”
― Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings

tags: experience, fruit, gall, husks, illusions

4 likes

“Schools are even less efficient in the arrangement of the circumstances which encourage the open-ended, exploratory use of acquired skills, for which I will reserve the term "liberal education." The main reason for this is that school is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling's sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers, which pays off in the doubtful privilege of more such company. Just as skill instruction must be freed from curricular restraints, so must liberal education be dissociated from obligatory attendance. Both skill-learning
and education for inventive and creative behavior can be aided by institutional arrangement, but they are of a different, frequently opposed nature.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

tags: education, schools

3 likes

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