CultureMemoryProgress

Thoughtful comments read or heard recently:

"There are very few places where progress is people-limited and not idea-limited." (BD)
"When we read a good long story like The Snow Queen, we enjoy it and think we should like to remember it. If it is really good we ought to remember it, not only because of its excellence, but, in the case of an old story, because we so often find allusions to it in our other reading. The best way to fix a story in mind is to make an outline of the incidents, or plot. Then we can see the whole thing almost at a glance, and so remembrance is made easy." (Charles H. Sylvester, Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 2)
"Better analytic thinking comes from considering all alternatives — separately, systematically, and sufficiently." (Morgan Jones + BF + BB, The Thinker's Toolkit)
"Culture is what is left after you have forgotten all you have definitely set out to learn." (quoted by Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, Prologue)
"The real problem is that we send far too high a percentage of our youth to Higher Education. ... We need to look harder at what people should do between 18 and 22 years of age." (BD)
"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius." (Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. L)

Thursday, September 28, 2000 at 05:46:17 (EDT) = 2000-09-28