“The persons we have to face are the dull, the stodgy, the unimaginative, the ancestor-worshippers, too timid to think for themselves, the persons who look at any suggestion of change with the expression of cows looking at a passing train. My own hope is still in education, in spite of many disillusionments. My hope is that some day teachers will impress upon their pupils the solemn duty of not accepting ready-made the beliefs of others, of not swallowing them unquestioningly as a child might swallow a pill given it by its mother. One had to put one’s beliefs on a foundation of sincerity before they are worthy to be called beliefs at all; and my hope is that some day education will train children for the real duty of life, which is to think for oneself and to act for oneself, and not to be one of the lifeless automata which make up the serried ranks of respectability.”
Walter Murdoch
From: Collected Essays of Walter Murdoch ,”On Dull People”
Angus & Robertson Limited Sydney and London 1938
1 Comment
May 22, 2007 at 4:14 am
well quoted…. excellent (with The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns tone)….