My Blog

Tag: learning

  • Contraction of the mind

    “There is no end to our researches; our end is in the other world. It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its powers of achievement. If…

  • I have chosen to say what I know how to say

    “I have chosen to say what I know how to say, accommodating the matter to my power. If I took a subject that would lead me along, I might not be able to measure up to it; with my freedom being so very free, I might publish judgements which, even according to my own opinion…

  • To listen to ourselves

    “The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor’s or an ordinary man’s, it is still a life subject to all human accidents. Let us only listen: we tell ourselves all we most need.” III.13 Of experience (p. 1001)

  • Lean toward doubt

    “And I follow Saint Augustine’s opinion, that it is better to lean toward doubt than toward assurance in things difficult to prove and dangerous to believe.” III.II “Of cripples” (p. 961)

  • All the abuses in the world

    “[A]ll the abuses in the world are engendered, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance and our being bound to accept everything that we cannot refute.” III.2 Of cripples (p. 959)

  • No End to Research

    “It is only personal weakness that makes us content with what others orourselves have found out in this hunt for knowledge. An abler man will not rest content with it. There is always room for a successor, yes, and for ourselves, and a road in another direction. There is no end to our researches; our…

  • School of stupidity

    “Isn’t that what we say, that the stupidity and lack of apprehension of the vulgar gives them this endurance of present troubles and this profound nonchalance about sinister accidents to come, that their souls, because they are thick and obtuse, are less penetrable and unstable? For Heaven’s sake, if that is so, let us henceforth…

  • Cure for ignorance

    “Anyone who wants to be cured of ignorance must confess it.” III.11 Of cripples (p. 959)

  • Myself now and myself a while ago

    “Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say. It would be fine to be old if we traveled only toward improvement. It is a drunkard’s motion, staggering, dizzy, wobbling, or that of reeds that the wind stirs haphazardly as it pleases.” III.9 “Of vanity” (p.895)

  • Capable, even in ignorance

    “If a man is commonplace in conversation and rare in writing, that means that his capacity is in the place from which he borrows it, and not in himself. A learned man is not learned in all matters; but the capable man is capable in all matters, even in ignorance.” III.2 “Of repentance” (p. 741)