Quotes from Richard Mitchell

There was a time, and we can easily see it in the five or six centuries that run roughly from the time of Socrates to the time of Epictetus, when the idea of education was very simple, and the supposed consequences of education, tremendous. With us, it is the other way around.

They might also ask us by what reasoning we have concluded that we can have it both ways, that in one breath we can say that those remote and lofty thinkers have not answered our questions as to the good, and, in another, we can boast that we have indeed become a better species, having virtuously given up such nasty habits as slavery and dueling and cannibalism.

The first and most obvious understanding of education comes from the fact that anyone who can not tell Reason from rubbish is not yet in a condition to know that he can not tell Reason from rubbish, a disability, which, you would suppose, can hardly be one of those put forth as education. But it is.

Tyranny is always and everywhere the same, while freedom is always various. The well and truly enslaved are dependable; we know what they will say and think and do. The free are quirky. Tyrannies may be overt and violent or covert and insidious, but they all require the same thing, a subject population in which the power of the word is dulled and, thus, the power of thought occluded and the power of deed brought low.

You can shoot the tiger, or stay out of his way, but you cannot pronounce him a vegetarian.

There is no other way to judge the work of a mind except through its words.

An education that does not teach clear, coherent writing cannot provide our world with thoughtful adults; it gives us instead, at the best, clever children of all ages.

Clear language engenders clear thought, and clear thought is the most important benefit of education.

Education, I am convinced, must be nothing more than this: The journey toward the limits of Reason, if any there be.