“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
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“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
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“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being”
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“If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism."
(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)”
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(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)”
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“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Love in the Time of Cholera
― Love in the Time of Cholera
Alex’s 2025 Year in Books
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