#th

I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your life Was a liner I voyaged in. Costly education had fitted you out. Financiers and committees and consultants Effaced themselves in the gleam of your finish. You trembled with the new life of those engines. That first morning, Before your first class at College, you sat there Sipping coffee. Now I know, as I did not, What eyes waited at the back of the class To check your first professional performance Against their expectations. What assessors Waited to see you justify the cost And redeem their gamble. What a furnace Of eyes waited to prove your metal. I watched The strange dummy stiffness, the misery, Of your blue flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly Half-approximation to your idea Of the properties you hoped to ease into, And your horror in it. And the tanned Almost green undertinge of your face Shrunk to its wick, your scar lumpish, your plaited Head pathetically tiny. You waited, Knowing yourself helpless in the tweezers Of the life that judges you, and I saw The flayed nerve, the unhealable face-wound Which was all you had for courage. I saw that what you gripped, as you sipped, Were terrors that killed you once already. Now I see, I saw, sitting, the lonely Girl who was going to die. That blue suit. A mad, execution uniform, Survived your sentence. But then I sat, stilled, Unable to fathom what stilled you As I looked at you, as I am stilled Permanently now, permanently Bending so briefly at your open coffin. ↗

— Ted Hughes

#poetry-quotes #the-blue-flannel-suit #courage

You may not remember the time you let me go first. Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go. Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up. You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you: Today, no matter what it takes, we ride home together. ↗

— Brian Andreas

#friendship #together #friendship

Granma said when you come on something good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out where no telling it will go. Which is right. ↗

— Forrest Carter

#education

However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship. ↗

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

#however #less #love #may #rare

People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought. ↗

— Richard Mitchell

#logic #thought #education

You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but--if you will pardon my saying so--all wrong. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#theories #education

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#broadsheet #journalism #newspaper #sherlock-holmes #the-times

It seems that we had...not a better education, per se, but perhaps more incentive to use it. They learn, but they hardly think. ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#thinking #education

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

I feel that all knowledge should be in the free-trade zone. Your knowledge, my knowledge, everybody's knowledge should be made use of. I think people who refuse to use other people's knowledge are making a big mistake. Those who refuse to share their knowledge with other people are making a great mistake, because we need it all. I don't have any problem about ideas I got from other people. If I find them useful, I'll just ease them right in and make them my own. ↗

— Myles Horton

#ideas #knowledge #sharing #thinking #change