Clive Staples Lewis Quotes

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented who are they to overtop their fellows And anyway, the teachers or should I say nurses will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men.

listening conceit age work men time human real sense children career education learning excellence teachers kind good attention bright school ancient ignorance plan teaching feel intellectual learn busy moral abolition movement waste boy trauma cat social made left pretty intelligent hope

Friendship is not necessary, like philosophy, like art.. It has no survival value rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

friendship philosophy survival art things give

Friendship is.. The sort of love one can imagine between angels.

friendship angels imagine love

The perfect church service would be the one we were almost unaware of our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself and thinking about worship is a different thing than worshipping.. 'Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god.

novelty church attention mad perfect worship thinking god thing idolatry greater

I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey.

free born

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries avoid all entanglements.

heart broken animal hobbies love give

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

truth comfort despair end find thinking begin