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1 " More profoundly, Nihilist " simplification" may be seen in the universal prestige today accorded the lowest order of knowledge, the scientific, as well as the simplistic ideas of men like Marx, Freud, and Darwin, which underlie virtually the whole of contemporary thought and life.We say " life," for it is important to see that the Nihilist history of our century has not been something imposed from without or above, or at least has not been predominantly this; it has rather presupposed, and drawn its nourishment from, a Nihilist soil that has long been preparing in the hearts of the people. It is precisely from the Nihilism of the commonplace, from the everyday Nihilism revealed in the life and thought and aspiration of the people, that all the terrible events of our century have sprung. The world-view of Hitler is very instructive in this regard, for in him the most extreme and monstrous Nihilism rested upon the foundation of a quite unexceptional and even typical Realism. He shared the common faith in " science," " progress," and " enlightenment" (though not, of course, in " democracy" ), together with a practical materialism that scorned all theology, metaphysics, and any thought or action concerned with any other world than the " here and now," priding himself on the fact that he had " the gift of reducing all problems to their simplest foundations." He had a crude worship of efficiency and utility that freely tolerated " birth control" , laughed at the institution of marriage as a mere legalization of a sexual impulse that should be " free" , welcomed sterilization of the unfit, despised " unproductive elements" such as monks, saw nothing in the cremation of the dead but a " practical" question and did not even hesitate to put the ashes, or the skin and fat, of the dead to " productive use." He possessed the quasi-anarchist distrust of sacred and venerable institutions, in particular the Church with its " superstitions" and all its " outmoded" laws and ceremonies. He had a naive trust in the " natural mom, the " healthy animal" who scorns the Christian virtues--virginity in particular--that impede the " natural functioning" of the body. He took a simple-minded delight in modern conveniences and machines, and especially in the automobile and the sense of speed and " freedom" it affords.There is very little of this crude Weltanschauung that is not shared, to some degree, by the multitudes today, especially among the young, who feel themselves " enlightened" and " liberated," very little that is not typically " modern. "
2 " The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. "
― Stephen Leacock , Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
3 " The village schoolmaster took us for instructive walks ('what you hear is the sound of a scythe being sharpened' ; 'that field there will be given a rest next season ';'oh, just a small bird...no special name '; 'if that peasant is drunk, it is because he is poor ') 71 "
― Vladimir Nabokov , Speak, Memory
4 " She now discovered amidst them, the poet's flights of fancy, and the historian's seldom pleasing—ever instructive page. The first may transmit to posterity the records of a sublime genius, which once flashed in strong, but transient rays, through the tenement of clay it was given a moment to inhabit: and though the tenement decayed and the spirit fled, the essence of a mind which darted through the universe to cull each created and creative image to enrich an ever-varying fancy, is thus snatched from oblivion, and retained, spite of nature, amidst the mortality from which it has struggled, and is freed. The page of the historian can monarchs behold, and not offer up the sceptre to be disencumbered of the ponderous load that clogs their elevation! Can they read of armies stretch upon the plain, provinces laid waste, and countries desolated, and wish to be the mortal whose vengeance, or whose less fierce, but fatal decision sent those armies forth! "
5 " I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons. "
― Kage Baker
6 " Envy and respect are not the same things...Before I endow you with respect, I should find out whether your curiosity is intellectual or merely morbid. Not that those who gawk at train derailments are so different from those who conduct autopsies; both want, at some level, to know what has happened, and, by extension, what will happen. Did the liver fail because of the decedent's alcoholism or was some toxin administered? If the deliverer is found, he or she may be imprisoned or, in more honest times, hanged, and thus pose no further threat. Or for the gawker at the accident, espying loose parts not unlike his or her own parts strewn amid wreckage may lead to a sense of awe at death's power, or horror at life's fragility, either of which may be instructive in any number of ways. "
― Christopher Buehlman , The Lesser Dead
7 " There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch . . . I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers . . . do away with the child's most beautiful privilege. I am determined that Anny shall have a very extensive and instructive store of learning in Tom Thumbs, Jack-the-Giant-Killers, etc. "
― William Makepeace Thackeray
8 " There are all degrees of proficiency in the use men make of this instructive world where we are boarded and schooled and apprenticed. It is sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three degrees of progress.One class lives to the utility of the symbol, as the majority of men do, regarding health and wealth as the chief good. Another class live about this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet and artist and the sensual school in philosophy. A third class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified and these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third spiritual perception.I see in society the neophytes of all these classes, the class especially of young men who in their best knowledge of the sign have a misgiving that there is yet an unattained substance and they grope and sigh and aspire long in dissatisfaction, the sand-blind adorers of the symbol meantime chirping and scoffing and trampling them down. I see moreover that the perfect man - one to a millennium - if so many, traverses the whole scale and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly; then also has a clear eye for its beauty; and lastly wears it lightly as a robe which he can easily throw off, for he sees the reality and divine splendor of the inmost nature bursting through each chink and cranny. "
― Ralph Waldo Emerson , Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume II: 1836-1838
9 " One who utters speech that isn't rough But instructive and truthfulSo that he offends no one, Him I call Brahmin. "
― , The Dhammapada
10 " It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist. "
― Murray N. Rothbard
11 " Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set off across the wood and canvas wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography. "
― Terry Pratchett , Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1)
12 " Even fairly good students, when they have obtained the solution of the problem and written down neatly the argument, shut their books and look for something else. Doing so, they miss an important and instructive phase of the work. ... A good teacher should understand and impress on his students the view that no problem whatever is completely exhausted. "
― George Pólya , How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
13 " It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found. "
― Clifford Geertz
14 " Perhaps if zoologists would contemplate the wide variations presented by many plants of indubitably one and the same species, and the still wider diversities of long cultivated races from an original stock, they would find more than one instructive parallel to the case of the longest domesticated of all species, man. "
― Asa Gray
15 " The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks. "
― Henry David Thoreau , The Quotable Thoreau
16 " The story of a man's soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation "
― Mikhail Lermontov , A Hero of Our Time
17 " you don’t have to live in community long to realize that lives which are blessed and instructive are still flawed. The grace of the gospel isn’t only that the Word was made flesh in Jesus, but also that the eternal Word is made present in weak and wonderful people. "
― Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove , New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church
18 " The instructive admonitions, “give an account of thy stewardship,“—“occupy till I come;” are forgotten. Thus the generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. "
― William Wilberforce , Real Christianity
19 " Nothing has been as instructive in exploring the notion of authenticity as relearning the work of the great philosophers Aristotle and Plato. We are struck by their applicability to our work as we help companies and people develop their brands. Why do these early philosophers have so much to say that is helpful to modern marketers? We believe it is because they were focused on the fundamental issues of authenticity that we all face: Who are we? Why are we? How should we behave? Asking these questions encourages us to deepen our self-awareness. In particular, this issue of “who are we?” is critical. Knowing who we are is the key to elevating our capacities and performance. "
― Tom Hayes
20 " The most common definition of [the word information] is: " the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came in vogue to use 'information' as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. 'Information' became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn't necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged its liberal deployment. It has become the single most important word of our decade, the suspense of our lives and our work. "