The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world, people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members.
Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.
Most books are about aspects of human knowledge. Few people write books about human ignorance, despite the fact that there would be much more to write about.
I like fragmentary writing, I seem to only be able to read fragments, feel fragments. And write fragments. (And live fragments.) The pieces naturally form a whole to me, the way minutes make up hours and hours make up days. Fragments flow, to me, in ways that unfragmented writings do not. They flow because they feel natural; yes, fragments feel natural, organic, uncomposed. A story well-composed might be beautiful, but it feels like a beautiful mask to me. Fragments are like the naturalness of children. Maybe that’s why I like fragments: because I can remain in childhood.
In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.
The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole.
Any curriculum will be pedagogically ineffective if it consists of a lecturer yammering in front of a blackboard, or a textbook that students highlight with a yellow marker. People understand concepts only when they are forced to think them through, to discuss them with others, and to use them to solve problems.