"Embarrassment is the greatest teacher, but since its lessons are exactly those we have tried hardest to conceal from ourselves, it may teach us, also, to perfect our self-deception."

James Richardson Politics See all quotes by James Richardson →

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“First he gathered what he needed. Then he needed to keep gathering what he used to need.”

“Books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.”

“Happiness, like water, is always available, but so often it seems we’d prefer a different drink.”

“Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear?”

“The best way to get people to do what you want is not to be too particular about what you want.”

“It is less important to escape pain than to avoid exceptionless rules.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher."

— Peter Agre

Science1949

#education

"I still wanted to tell our teacher about how the Indian people who’d worked on the ranch for us had explained to me that Shep, who’d always loved my brother more than life itself, had disappeared, bec…"

— Victor Villaseñor

Literature1940

#education

"If Communist China agrees to renounce the use of force in the formosa strait, we could consider opening up channels of non-official contact... journalists, students, tourists, etc."

— Henry Kissinger

Politics1923–2023

#education

"...the gentleness, the concessions, the morbid tenderness of Louis XVI had only tended to precipitate his own and his people's doom, and aggravate the ferocity of those he tried by kindness to disarm."

— Robert Gascoyne-Cecil

Politics1830–1903

#kindness