Education, learning, epistemology

understand all of their subject except their subject. They were, I suppose, bred and born in that brier–patch, and have really explored it without coming to the end of it. That is, they have studied everything but the question of what they are studying.

We are as solid as most truly false things are—a dance of particles in space. Only the things no one can touch are true, as you should know by now.

It was of final importance to Dickens that poor men could amuse themselves and could amuse him. He troubled little about the mere education of that life; he declared two essential things about it—that it was laughable, and that it was livable.

they were too much troubled and knocked about to learn; they could no more do that to advantage, than any one can do anything to advantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment, and worry.

The truth is, that there is nothing in common at all between these teachers, except that they teach. In short, the only thing they share is the one thing they profess to dislike: the general idea of authority.

On this ship I was a child again, knowing no more of the world around me than a child does.

Hugo had few story-books; but he did not need them; for he lived in the forest, and the forest tells its own tales to the children who live there.