Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education.
Interpretation
Pay attention to wise individuals to gain knowledge and avoid the dangers of indifference.
This quote emphasizes the importance of actively listening to knowledgeable people in order to enhance oneβs education. It warns that indifference and lack of attention are significant obstacles to learning and personal growth, suggesting that being engaged and curious can lead to a richer understanding of the world.
In practice
In a motivational speech about lifelong learning.
Indeed, I suspect that the changes that have taken place during the last century in the average man's fundamental beliefs, in his philosophy, in his conception of religion, in his whole world outlook, are greater than the changes that occurred during the preceding four thousand years all put together.
Fullness of knowledge always means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance; and that is always conducive to humility and reverence.
This much I can say with definiteness - namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion - nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance.
It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.
Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.
With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home anywhere.
God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
No child in Africa, and in fact anywhere in the world, should be denied education.
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