Ángel ’s Reviews > Escape from Childhood > Status Update

A person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought.

It would not take more than one bad beating to convince me that I was unloved, and if beatings are the price of "love", I can do without it.

Children can be and are regularly punished, by parents and the law, for any of the reasons, and the same reasons for which slaves used to be punished - for talking back, for disrespect, for disobedience, for being at large without permission, for running away - in short, for doing anything that may imply that they think they have any freedom or rights at all.

There is, or at least it seems to be, so little work in society that is worth doing, into which one might with good conscience put all one's energy. Most of the work people seem to be doing around us is monotonous, undemanding, boring, and stupid, if not actually dishonest or destructive. The good causes we know all seem like losing causes, and it doesn't help anyone who already feels like a loser to keep on losing.

The family even as most people knew it in this country a hundred years ago has been almost entirely destroyed. The family was in turn very different from the European family of three hundred years before, when the whole notion of the home and the family as private have not been yet invented.

The family even as most people knew it in this country a hundred years ago has been almost entirely destroyed. The family was in turn very different from the European family of three hundred years before, when the whole notion of the home and the family as private have not been yet invented.