A child's natural form of behavior is play, and in our aim to educate, play should be honored and preserved for as long past childhood as can be. Rebecca Goldstein More Quotes by Rebecca Goldstein More Quotes From Rebecca Goldstein Less money spent on billboards that just make us feel good about ourselves and more on soup kitchens and organized visits to the sick and dying. Rebecca Goldstein soup-kitchensgenerositysick That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre. Rebecca Goldstein being-mebecomingworry Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well. Rebecca Goldstein issuesemotionalplato In fact, it’s the very impersonality of impersonal knowledge that renders such knowledge the most ethically potent of all. Rebecca Goldstein impersonalityfacts Those who share my heroes are, in the deepest sense, of my own kind. Rebecca Goldstein kindheroshare Mother' is not an identity one can just try on for size. Rebecca Goldstein identitymothertrying Youth is not an essential, but rather an accidental property. Nobody is in essence young. One either ceases to be or ceases to be young. Rebecca Goldstein youthessentialsessence To matter ... Is there any human will deeper than that? ... We don't want to live when we become convinced that we don't, can't, will never matter. ... We no sooner discover that we are than we desperately want that which we are to matter. Rebecca Goldstein deepermatterwant Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute. Rebecca Goldstein philosophicalplatophilosophy To matter, to mind. ... What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy. ... Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind? Rebecca Goldstein tragedymindmay Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. [If] what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses. Rebecca Goldstein what-mattersintelligenthero And now having a child has been taken out of the sphere of biological determinism and placed instead in the domain of intentional action. Another option to consider and decide upon. And ... not to choose is to choose. Rebecca Goldstein decide-upontakenchildren For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one's life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us all the personal bother. Kleos is a tweak away. Rebecca Goldstein mediatechnologygreek Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better. Rebecca Goldstein doneplatophilosophy The contrast between the two, the sweetness and the badness, wrenches the heart of the lover as such sweetness on its own would not, and the lover shudders all the more at dread of the beloved's recklessness, for the sake of the sweetness that is there, and the shudder only makes more violent the shuddering that announces love. Rebecca Goldstein sakehearttwo If you don't exert yourself, or if your exertions don't amount to much of anything, then you might as well not have bothered to have shown up for your existence at all. Rebecca Goldstein existencewellsmight This is the pedagogical paradox. The person and the teacher is required precisely because the knowledge itself is nontransferable from teacher to student. Rebecca Goldstein paradoxstudentsteacher Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people. Rebecca Goldstein be-preparedexcusepeople Children, who have so much to learn in so short a time, had involved the tendency to trust adults to instruct them in the collective knowledge of our species, and this trust confers survival value. But it also makes children vulnerable to being tricked and adults who exploit this vulnerability should be deeply ashamed. Rebecca Goldstein adultssurvivalchildren Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off; and that is precisely what science is. Scientific methodology is the arrangement that allows reality to answer us back. Rebecca Goldstein would-beanswersreality
