The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.
Philip PullmanRead
Education and health were always matters of charity. You educated children and you helped the sick because they were good things to do, not because you were going to make money out of them. If you let the money-making principle, the profit-seeking motive, anywhere near education and health, things go bad.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Helping others through education and health should be motivated by altruism, not profit.
Philip Pullman's quote emphasizes the importance of viewing education and healthcare as charitable endeavors rather than profit-driven activities. He warns that introducing profit motives into these essential services can lead to detrimental outcomes, suggesting that our focus should be on doing good for others rather than seeking financial gain.
Themes
EducationHealthCharityProfitAltruism
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of philanthropy, this quote reminds us that education should be prioritized over profit.
More from Philip Pullman
All quotes →To get the best out of life here ...Good grief. There's plenty of it about, so indulge. Give yourself some thing to remember. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Gamble. Get drunk. See how long you can stay awake. Go for long walks at night. Discover what you're afraid of doing, and then do it.
Philip PullmanRead
People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.
Philip PullmanRead
I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.
Philip PullmanRead
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.
Philip PullmanRead
If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.
Philip PullmanRead
Similar quotes
As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.
Robert Green IngersollRead
Children read to learn - even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries - it is all new to them.
Joan AikenRead
We have an education and business culture that tends to reward quick factual answers over imaginative inquiry. Questioning isn’t encouraged - it is barely tolerated.
Warren BergerRead
The giving of love and understanding is an education in itself.
Eleanor RooseveltRead
Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process.
Kurt LewinRead
We know that when people are civically engaged, when they understand what their rights are, when they understand that in a democracy you can challenge governments, you can challenge policymakers, and you can... actually shape and form future policy, I think it changes the perception that a lot of young people have about where power is.
Ilhan OmarRead