Pedagogue

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy

1844–1900

"Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love."

Immanuel Kant

Philosophy

Enlightenment

1724–1804

"Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality."

Leo Tolstoy

Literature

literary realism

1828–1910

"Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government."

🇺🇸Richard Rorty

Philosophy

Pragmatism

1931–2007

"My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have … "an ambition of transcendence.""

🇺🇸Booker T. Washington

Literature

1856–1915

"There is no power on earth, that can neutralize the influence of a high, pure, simple and useful life."

🇮🇹Umberto Eco

Literature

1932–2016

"I don't miss my youth. I'm glad I had one, but I wouldn't like to start over."

🇺🇸John Dewey

Philosophy

1859–1952

"Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail."

🇺🇸Robert Frost

Literature

1874–1963

"You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.... The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat."

🇺🇸John Rawls

Philosophy

analytic philosophy

1921–2002

"That persons have opposing interests and seek to advance their own conception of the good is not at all the same thing as their being moved by envy and jealousy."

🇨🇭Jean Piaget

Philosophy

1896–1980

"Conclusion of The Construction of Reality in the Child"

🇺🇸Randy Pausch

Education

1960–2008

"And be prepared. Luck is truly where preparation meets opportunity."

🇺🇸Julia Cameron

Literature

b. 1948

"Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything."

🇨🇦Laurence J. Peter

Education

1919–1990

"Dr. Peter effectively destroys examples of seeming exceptions and is rather convincing that his principle is ubiquitous."

🇩🇪Ivan Illich

Religion

degrowth

1926–2002

"A page on Illich on the WikiWikiWeb, with more links"

"On my view there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs."

🇺🇸Nick Herbert (physicist)

Literature

b. 1936

"The quantum world is not made up of objects."

Kazimir Malevich

Art

Suprematism

1879–1935

"We have rejected reason because we have found another reason that could be called trans-rational, which has its own law, construction and sense.. .This reason has found a way-Cubism-of expressing the object."

🇬🇧Chris Patten

Politics

b. 1944

"“Xi Jinping and his court have regarded Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s freedoms as an existential problem for them because Hong Kong represents so much of what they dislike."

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Politics

1850–1937

"Unquestionably society ought to be so organised as to render self-sacrifice superfluous, for as long as men exist who are ready and willing to make sacrifices, so long will egoists take advantage of these sacrifices."

Aage Niels Bohr

Science

1922–2009

"The constant questioning of our values and achievements is a challenge without which neither science nor society can remain healthy."

🇦🇺F. Matthias Alexander

Entertainment

1869–1955

"The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique"

🇺🇸Robin DiAngelo

Education

b. 1956

"Why It's So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism, article written by DiAngelo for"

🇩🇪Gershom Scholem

Literature

1897–1982

"Audio of Gershom Scholem lecturing on Kabbalah in 1975"

🇷🇺Alexander Herzen

Politics

Socialism

1812–1870

"The peasants will be emancipated if there is a future for Rus and for the Slavic world."

"They Never Wanted To Be Themselves , New York Times, May 24, 1987"

Leszek Kołakowski

Philosophy

1927–2009

"I do not know what postmodern is and how it differs from the premodern, nor do I feel that I ought to know."

🇦🇺Michael Halliday

linguistics

1925–2018

"Foregrounding, as I understand it, is prominence that is motivated"

🇺🇸Robert Bork

Law

1927–2012

"Bork, Robert H. Our Judicial Oligarchy. 1996 First Things November ."

🇺🇸James Russell Lowell

Literature

1819–1891

"The question of common sense is always "What is it good for?"—a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage."

🇺🇸Eugene Fama

Economics

b. 1939

"Although size and book to market equity seem like ad hoc variables for explaining average stock returns, we have reason to expect that they proxy for common risk factors in returns."

🇺🇸Stanley Fischer

Economics

1943–2025

"I still think Keynesian economics is extremely important, and if anybody didn’t think so, this crisis should have made them rethink."

🇬🇧Cecil Roth

History

1899–1970

"Abraham ibn Ezra, that restless, versatile Spaniard who wrote on almost every subject which could interest the medieval mind"

"The masses of the people could not be held back from Nazism, so powerful was its appeal, and this same priest, who would not leave his people, went with them to Nazism, too."

🇫🇷Alfred Binet

Psychology

1857–1911

"We are, for the rest, so wrapped up in sensations that none of our boldest conceptions can break through the circle."

"A liberal public is interesting to have as an audience. It is for that very reason that corporations make such an effort to ally themselves with cultural institutions."

🇮🇹Maria Montessori

Education

1870–1952

"Centre for Montessori Studies , Roma Tre University"

🇺🇸Donald Schön

Philosophy

1930–1997

"Old questions are not answered—they only go out of fashion."