Home > Work > You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
81 " Anxiety,” Kierkegaard said, “is the dizziness of freedom.” This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then—it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect. "
― Eleanor Roosevelt , You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life
82 " One of the things I believe most intensely is that every child’s why should be answered with care—and with respect. If you do not know the answer, and you often will not, then take the child with you to a source to find the answer. This may be a dictionary or encyclopedia which he is too young to use himself, but he will have had a sense of participation in finding the answer. "
83 " What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. "
84 " Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don’t be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren’t paying any attention to you. It’s your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you’ll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there’s no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself. "
85 " We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a very real sense, by the time we are adult, we are the sum total of the choices we have made. "
86 " the thing we call French culture may be due to the fact that French children can play, surrounded by the things of the past, palaces of bygone kings, statues, remembrances of history. "
87 " Education provides the necessary tools, equipment by which we learn how to learn. "
88 " It was the flexibility, the originality, and the independence of thought—combined, of course, with our vast resources—that made American business grow so rapidly. If the seeds of growth are made sterile, if men become passive followers instead of developing qualities of leadership—and courage—we may find someday that our way of life has been superseded. "
89 " For some years now there has been considerable conflict in educational circles about what and how children should be taught. The old system was to serve two purposes: to discipline the mind and to provide young people with a background of knowledge about the past, history, philosophy, and the arts. More recently, the influence of Dewey has been powerful in effecting a change in orientation. It is not so important, according to this school, to provide the child with a background of general culture. The essential thing is to relate every fact learned to the tangible world around him. The purpose of his education is to explain to him the things he can feel and see and touch and experience in his daily life. "
90 " Now and then, I am surprised to read of the death of someone I have known, because I thought he or she had died long ago. Actually, he had only stopped growing. "
91 " If the child’s curiosity is not fed, if his questions are not answered, he will stop asking questions. And then, by the time he is in his middle twenties, he will stop wondering about all the mysteries of his world. His curiosity will be dead. "
92 " A FEW years ago, someone asked me for my definition of a mature person. Here it is: “A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world all of us need both love and charity. "
93 " There is no experience from which you can't learn something. "
94 " Whatever period of life we are in is good only to the extent that we make use of it, that we live it to the hilt, that we continue to develop and understand what it has to offer us and we have to offer it. "
95 " You must try to understand truthfully what makes you do things or feel things. Until you have been able to face the truth about yourself you cannot be really sympathetic or understanding in regard to what happens to other people. But it takes courage to face yourself and to acknowledge what motivates you in the things you do. "
96 " Anxiety,” Kierkegaard said, “is the dizziness of freedom. "
97 " The knowledge of how little you can do alone teaches you humility. "
98 " HAPPINESS is not a goal, it is a by-product. "
99 " Actually, an important part of self-knowledge is that it gives one a better realization of the inner strength that can be called upon, of which one may be quite unaware. "
100 " Consider the truly happy people you know. I think it is unlikely that you will find that circumstances have made them happy. They have made themselves happy in spite of circumstances. "