2 ratings (5.00 avg)
1 review

Mark Alexander

Add friend

Mark’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (3)

currently-reading‎ (0)

read‎ (2)

not-reading‎ (0)

Stats | More…

Mark’s Quotes

“His jargon conceals, from him, but not from us, the deep, empty hole in his mind. He uses technological language as a substitute for technique.”
― Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say

tags: jargon, thoughts

5 likes

“Training is a good dog, a constant companion and an utterly loyal and devoted friend, and everyone should have one. Education is a nagging counselor. And, I am convinced, everyone does have one. It happens, however, that some nagging counselors have grown strong by a certain kind of nourishment. Others are weak and puny, even infantile, having never been nourished at all.”
― Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire

tags: education, learning, reason, reasoning, training

4 likes

“Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.”
― Richard Mitchell

tags: education, homeschool, homeschooling

36 likes

“That's how ideas and the institutions they generate come to be in the first place. It is in strings of words that we make ideas. The words, however, can say anything that the language permits, which, in our case, is quite a lot, so a string of words can just as easily express inanities as ideas. When inanities are expressed, we can discover them just by paying attention to the words.”
― Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say

tags: ideas, inanities, language, words

3 likes

“Like prepositional phrases, certain structural arrangements in English are much more important than the small bones of grammar in its most technical sense. It really wouldn't matter much if we started dropping the s from our plurals. Lots of words get along without it anyway, and in most cases context would be enough to indicate number. Even the distinction between singular and plural verb forms is just as much a polite convention as an essential element of meaning. But the structures, things like passives and prepositional phrases, constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow.
”
― Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say

tags: grammar, language, thinking, thought

5 likes

More of Mark’s quotes…