"My words never reached him; I could almost hear them drop, one by one, like so many pebbles against a closed window."

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“In Memory of Those Who Died Waiting for the Bell”

“With me they get a solid foundation, the disciplines of learning. In my class they don't get away with hot air discussions and exchanging their opinions and describing their experiences. What opinions can they have? What have they experienced? What do they know? That's an affront! They learn what I know.”

“We got this jerky sub. she don't know a thing and she's trying to teach it.”

“I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.”

“Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.”

“One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them.”

Resonant Thoughts

"An idea, a relationship, can go extinct, just like an animal or a plant. The idea in this case is 'nature,' the separate and wild province, the world apart from man to which he adapted, under whose ru…"

— Bill McKibben

Literature1960

#life

"For 30 years I have watched from a central position the manifestations of the will power of Great Britain, and I do not believe the people will consent to be edged, pushed, talked and cozened out of I…"

— Winston Churchill

Politics1940–2010

#success

"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognitio…"

— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Philosophy1770–1831

#success

"That spirit I have faith will prevail. America is not going to abandon its principles or desert its ideals. The foundation on which they are built will remain firm. I believe that the principle which …"

— Calvin Coolidge

Politics1780–1853

#justice