inspiring quotes about art, education & society
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
You can’t look at anything without the knowledge that other people have looked at it and thought about it. We are made of other people’s opinions whether we like it or not, because we are surrounded by language. That’s what language is-a sharing of ideas that allows us to make up what seem like our own ideas but are in fact just an accumulation of other peoples’ thoughts. The only free will we have is to decide which ideas to agree or disagree with. We exist within language; we can’t escape it. -- Glenn Brown
“ The plain fact is that the planet does not need more “successful” people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it". David W. Orr
“ People will venture out to the height of the mountain to seek for wonder. They will stand and stare at the width of the ocean to be filled with wonder. But they will pass one another in the street and feel nothing. Yet every individual is a miracle. How strange that nobody sees the wonder in one another". Saint Augustine
The task of this generation
Each generation differs from the preceding one in the determination of its task. The task of this generation is to search for its roots. It must try to understand the significance of natural functions so that everyone may become aware of the essential purpose of living: the preservation and refinement of the biological nature of the individual within a harmonious social existence. The value of such an existence will be measured in terms of cooperation, social usefulness and personal happiness. This new life requires a new methodology for approaching problems; a social mechanism of production and a creative education.
But the teachers of mankind are not only the personnel in schools, colleges and universities. To reach different temperaments, intellectual, verbal explanations alone are not effective. There are a great number of other approaches needed. The arts, for example, can take the individual by storm through sensory experiences, directly by feelings, without involving too much intellectual participation. The arts can play an important role in the re-education of the people.
For the time being everything is in a state of flux. The best we can do is to expose ourselves to contemporary art and its formulations which are based mainly upon the direct sensory impact of its means. The result is a grasp of new imagery and its new rhythmic structure; a purification and strengthening of the perceptional and conceptual faculties. This new imagery is the essence of the manifold potentialities of this yet-chaotic world translated into a language of directness and intensity.
-Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours. Your are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer, is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward.”
-Jorge Luis Borges
“ What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsible, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods
“ [A] train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”
I found these gems scattered throughout: robertogreco.tumblr.com
You can’t look at anything without the knowledge that other people have looked at it and thought about it. We are made of other people’s opinions whether we like it or not, because we are surrounded by language. That’s what language is-a sharing of ideas that allows us to make up what seem like our own ideas but are in fact just an accumulation of other peoples’ thoughts. The only free will we have is to decide which ideas to agree or disagree with. We exist within language; we can’t escape it. -- Glenn Brown
“ The plain fact is that the planet does not need more “successful” people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it". David W. Orr
“ People will venture out to the height of the mountain to seek for wonder. They will stand and stare at the width of the ocean to be filled with wonder. But they will pass one another in the street and feel nothing. Yet every individual is a miracle. How strange that nobody sees the wonder in one another". Saint Augustine
The task of this generation
Each generation differs from the preceding one in the determination of its task. The task of this generation is to search for its roots. It must try to understand the significance of natural functions so that everyone may become aware of the essential purpose of living: the preservation and refinement of the biological nature of the individual within a harmonious social existence. The value of such an existence will be measured in terms of cooperation, social usefulness and personal happiness. This new life requires a new methodology for approaching problems; a social mechanism of production and a creative education.
But the teachers of mankind are not only the personnel in schools, colleges and universities. To reach different temperaments, intellectual, verbal explanations alone are not effective. There are a great number of other approaches needed. The arts, for example, can take the individual by storm through sensory experiences, directly by feelings, without involving too much intellectual participation. The arts can play an important role in the re-education of the people.
For the time being everything is in a state of flux. The best we can do is to expose ourselves to contemporary art and its formulations which are based mainly upon the direct sensory impact of its means. The result is a grasp of new imagery and its new rhythmic structure; a purification and strengthening of the perceptional and conceptual faculties. This new imagery is the essence of the manifold potentialities of this yet-chaotic world translated into a language of directness and intensity.
-Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy. A writer or any artist has the sometimes joyful duty to transform all that into symbols. These symbols could be colors, forms or sounds. For a poet, the symbols are sounds and also words, fables, stories, poetry. The work of a poet never ends. It has nothing to do with working hours. Your are continuously receiving things from the external world. These must be transformed, and eventually will be transformed. This revelation can appear anytime. A poet never rests. He’s always working, even when he dreams. Besides, the life of a writer, is a lonely one. You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but who love you. And that is an immense reward.”
-Jorge Luis Borges
“ What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsible, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods
“ [A] train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it is also something that goes by. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”
I found these gems scattered throughout: robertogreco.tumblr.com