Great Throughts Treasury

"Education - the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat."

"Some philosophers do not distinguish between freedom and moral responsibility. Put a bit more carefully, they tend to begin with the notion of moral responsibility, and "work back" to a notion of freedom; this notion of freedom is not given independent content (separate from the analysis of moral responsibility). For such philosophers, "freedom" refers to whatever conditions are involved in choosing or acting in such a way as to be morally responsible."

"The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses."

"So total control is a chimaera. It is manifestly ludicrous to aspire to it or to regret its absence. The locus of control is not wholly within us. We do not exist in a protective bubble of control. Rather, we are thoroughly and pervasively subject to luck: actual causal factors entirely out of our control are such that, if they were not to occur, things at least might be very different. Quite apart from any special assumption about causal determinism, we can see that from a broader perspective, it is entirely a matter of luck or arbitrary that I behave as I do (or even that I developed into an agent at all — or have maintained that status). Although it is perfectly reasonable to wish to be the source of one's choices and behavior, it is not reasonable to interpret the relevant notion of sourcehood in terms of total control and internality."