RJ Patten

“In a college classroom, although it is rarely ceremonially observed or even noticed, there must be a moment where a student says, “Yes! I do hereby accept this challenge. I give myself to it and to what it requires. I pledge to trust the guidance of the professor, to guard my time to make a priority of the work that it will take to gain the skills and carry out the assignments. I pledge to listen deeply and humbly to the text. I pledge faithful support to my classmates. I pledge to be patient. What’s more, I pledge to allow myself to be transformed into what I am not yet. I pledge my troth to the reality I do not yet know. Where no pledge takes place, no education transpires.”
― Esther Lightcap Meek, A Little Manual for Knowing

“Space places two fundamental constraints on movement, constraints that are reflected in thought: proximity--near places are easier to get to than far ones; and gravity--going up is more effortful than going down.”
― Barbara Tversky, Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring, that of their opponents exciting but false.”
― Roger Scruton, How to be a Conservative

“The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness— and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings —is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”
― Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind