Quotes

"I should begin by explaining what I mean by 'our culture.' Rather than burden you with a definition, I'll give you a simple test that you can use wherever you go in the world. If the food in that part of the world is under lock and key, and the people who live there have to work to get it, then you're among people of our culture. If you happen to be in a jungle in the interior of Brazil or New Guinea, however, you'll find that the food is not under lock and key. It's simply out there for the taking, and anyone who wants some can just go and get it. The people who live in these areas, often called aboriginals, stone-age peoples, or tribal peoples, clearly belong to a culture radically different from our own."

-- Daniel Quinn, author of "Ishmael" and "If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways," in a speech given at a homeschooling conference
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"The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive."

-- Thich Nhat Hanh
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"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

-- Albert Einstein
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"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget about it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it. One day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself."

-- Grace Llewellyn in The Teenage Liberation Handbook
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"Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. . . I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be."

-- Anna Quindlen in a column written in 2000
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"So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school–those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that."

-- Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) in "Little Miss Sunshine"
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"Well, we busted out of class, had to get away from those fools. We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school."

--Bruce Springsteen in "No Surrender"