Educated Barbarians Quotes

In my own opinion, the average American's cultural shortcomings can be likened to those of the educated barbarians of ancient Rome. These were barbarians who learned to speak--and often to read and write--Latin. They acquired Roman habits of dress and deportment. Many of them handily mastered Roman commercial, engineering and military techniques--but they remained barbarians nonetheless. They failed to develop any understanding, appreciation or love for the art and culture of the great civilization around them. ~ J. Paul Getty

Intelligent, artistic, hard-working, well-mannered, educated, decent... good! Strong! Masculine! What else... Oh yes! Good-looking, sexy, experienced, exceptionally knowledgeable in bed, always fashionable, stylish, fragrant, flawless, faultless, I'm-just-perfect Alex!
And me? I'm just like everyone else: a cocktail of virtues and shortcomings served with a couple of flaws. And that's why this superhuman is starting to infuriate me. I desperately want to hurt his feelings or at least offend him in some way. This seems like an unhealthy reaction at first glance but is actually completely healthy, because next to people like him – if others like him even exist – you feel more awkward, more flawed, more stupid, and more subhuman than ever. ~ Victoria Sobolev

Indeed, many adults don't consider having children at all until they've deemed themselves good and ready: in 2008, 72 percent of college-educated women between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine had not yet had children. ~ Jennifer Senior

If you educate an idiot, you end up with an educated idiot. ~ Robert Clarence Swanson

The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends ... In England, for instance, you find everyone in your class has read the same books. Here, people grope for something in common-like a newly engaged girl who came to me and said, It's absolutely wonderful! His uncle and my cousin were on the same football team. ~ Margaret Mead

Over 60 percent of the university students in Iran are female. The women in Iran are better educated than men. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Architects should be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Interest in alchemy seems to be nowadays on the rise. Whereas the educated public at large remains no doubt skeptical and indeed disdainful of the ancient discipline, there is today a deepening awareness among the better informed that what stands behind many an "exploded superstition" may be in fact a long-forgotten wisdom. Although Carl Jung was obviously exaggerating when ! he suggested that four centuries after being expelled from our universities,- alchemy stands "knocking at the door," a number of factors have conspired; to render the prospect of re-admission less remote, at least, than it had been ; during the heyday of materialism. In any case, no truly solid grounds for rejecting the ancient doctrine have yet been proposed. Take the case of the so-called four elements: earth, water, air and fire. One can be reasonably certain that these terms were not employed alchemically in their ordinary sense, but were used to designate elements, precisely, out of which substances, as we know them, are constituted. Somewhat like the quarks of modern physics, these elements are not found empirically in isolation, but occur in their multiple combinations, that is to say, as the perceptible substances that constitute what I term the corporeal domain. Now, as I have argued at length in The Quantum Enigma (Peru, Illinois: Sherwood Sugden, 1995), corporeal objects are not in fact mere aggregates of quantum particles; and this clearly suggests that there may indeed be elements of the afo ~ Wolfgang Smith

The elderly are the most entertaining people in the world," she eventually told Irina. "They have lived a lot, say whatever they like, and couldn't care less about other people's opinion. You'll never get bored here. Our residents are well educated, and if they're in good health they keep on learning and experimenting. This community stimulates them and they can avoid the worst scourge of old age: loneliness." Irina ~ Isabel Allende

Regardless of who they are, whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, Afghan women often describe the difference between men and women in just one word: freedom. ~ Jenny Nordberg

Nobody knows anything ... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one. ~ William Goldman

I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages. Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare. The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution. I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton. My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting. Nobody did this on purpose. Nobody tried to deprive me of my civilizational patrimony. But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack. ~ Rod Dreher

The real challenge is figuring out how the United States can regain control of its future from its new oligarchy and restore its position as a prosperous, fair, well-educated nation. For if we don't, the current pattern of great concentration of wealth and power will worsen, and we may face the steady immiseration of most of the American population ... ~ Charles Ferguson

An educated man should know everything about something and something about everything ~ C.V. Wedgwood

Every piece of marble has a statue in it waiting to be released by a person of sufficient skill to chip away the unnecessary parts. Just as the sculptor is to the marble, so is education to the soul. It releases it. For only educated people are free people. You cannot create a statue by smashing the marble with a hammer, and you cannot by the force of arms release the spirit or the soul of people. ~ Confucius

By the time most people pick up a parenting book, it is far too late. Most of the things that matter were decided long ago - who you are, whom you married, what kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well educated, well paid, and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed. (Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest, thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.) But it isn't so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it's who you are ~ Steven D. Levitt

I think future generations will look back at this history of our country and call us barbarians for murdering millions of babies who we never gave a chance to live. ~ Marco Rubio

It's generally sort of sociologically observed that the better educated people are, the more liberal they tend to be, which would suggest that professors are going to be more liberal than the general public. ~ Louis Menand

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others. ~ Bertrand Russell

See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.. ~ Brigham Young

To the extent that we are all educated and informed, we will be more equipped to deal with the gut issues that tend to divide us. ~ Caroline Kennedy

I surrender this rifle to you through my young son, whom I now desire to teach in this manner that he has become a friend of the Americans. I wish him to learn the habits of the whites and to be educated as their sons are educated. I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living. ~ Sitting Bull

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories, and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit ... .The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free ... .not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Basically, if the author is totally un-educated, then the text won't bring out his best. Normal, educated people always understand that. But here's the thing - when the author is very highly-educated, the result is the same: the text turns out sub-par. Like if Charybdis was an uneducated cannibal, and Scylla was a sophisticated gourmand.
Real literature snakes between the two. Like Hera's hair. ~ Elizaveta Mikhailichenko Yury Nesis

It is precisely among young, educated radicals, warns Austin, that a new generation of cyber warriors will be recruited. ~ Ted Koppel

Being smart isn't good enough. You need to be educated, and you need to be open-minded, and you need to remember that what you don't know can most definitely hurt you. ~ Seanan McGuire

I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context ... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived. ~ Reza Aslan

[An educated person:] One who voluntarily does more thinking than is necessary for his own survival. ~ Mildred H. McAfee

Educated idiots are the most fearsome creatures in a leadership structure because even though trained they still refuse to think. ~ Donavan Nelson Butler

I can not remember telling my parents that I was studying classics, they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard-put to name one less useful in Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys of an executive bathroom. Now I would like to make it clear in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date for blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction. The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I can not criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor. And I quite agree with them, that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty, entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression, It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something by which to pride yourself, but poverty itself, is romanticized only by fools. But I feared at your age was not poverty, but failure... Now, I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted, and well educated, that you have never known heartbreak, hardship, or heartache. Talent and intelligence, never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates... ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure. ~ J.K. Rowling

Anyone can be self-educated if they find the loose end of something to care about passionately. ~ Francis Spufford

A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who've never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages. ~ Leo Tolstoy

As explained above, those who believe in the theory of
evolution think that a few atoms and molecules thrown into
a huge vat could produce thinking, reasoning professors
and university students; such scientists as Einstein and
Galileo; such artists as Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra
and Luciano Pavarotti; as well as antelopes, lemon trees,
and carnations. Moreover, as the scientists and professors
who believe in this nonsense are educated people, it is
quite justifiable to speak of this theory as "the most potent
spell in history." Never before has any other belief or idea
so taken away peoples' powers of reason, refused to allow
them to think intelligently and logically, and hidden the
truth from them as if they had been blindfolded. This is an
even worse and unbelievable blindness than the totem
worship in some parts of Africa, the people of Saba worshipping
the Sun, the tribe of Prophet Ibrahim (as) worshipping
idols they had made with their own hands, or the
people of Prophet Musa (as) worshipping the Golden Calf.

In fact, Allah has pointed to this lack of reason in the
Qur'an. In many verses, He reveals that some peoples'
minds will be closed and that they will be powerless to see
the truth. Some of these verses are as follows:
As for those who do not believe, it makes no difference
to them whether you warn them or do not warn them,
they will not ~ Harun Yahya

[There] is no class so dangerous as the idle educated. ~ Anthony Daniels

In the late nineteenth century, many educated Indians were taught the same lesson by their British masters. One famous anecdote tells of an ambitious Indian who mastered the intricacies of the English language, took lessons in Western-style dance, and even became accustomed to eating with a knife and fork. Equipped with his new manners, he travelled to England, studied law at University College London, and became a qualified barrister. Yet this young man of law, bedecked in suit and tie, was thrown off a train in the British colony of South Africa for insisting on travelling first class instead of settling for third class, where 'coloured' men like him were supposed to ride. His name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ~ James Baldwin

I feel that we can't educate children who are not healthy, and we can't keep them healthy if they're not educated. There has to be a marriage between health and education. You can't learn if your mind is full of unhealthy images from daily life and confusion about right and wrong. ~ Joycelyn Elders

The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa. ~ Edward Gibbon

My own acid-eating experience is limited in terms of total consumption, but widely varied as to company and circumstances ... and if I had a choice of repeating any one of the half dozen bouts I recall, I would choose one of those Hell's Angels parties in La Honda, complete with all the mad lighting, cops on the road, a Ron Boise sculpture looming out of the woods, and all the big speakers vibrating with Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." It was a very electric atmosphere. If the Angels lent a feeling of menace, they also made it more interesting ... and far more alive than anything likely to come out of a controlled experiment or a politely brittle gathering of well-educated truth-seekers looking for wisdom in a capsule. Dropping acid with the Angels was an adventure; they were too ignorant to know what to expect, and too wild to care. They just swallowed the stuff and hung on ... which is probably just as dangerous as the experts say, but a far, far nuttier trip than sitting in some sterile chamber with a condescending guide and a handful of nervous, would-be hipsters. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Intuition is educated by experience and employed by curiosity. ~ Jim Blasingame

Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants, within reasonable limits. Hence the fact thjat in times of stress "educated" people tend to come to the front; they are no more gifted than the others and their "education" is generally quite useless in itself, but they are accustomed to a certain amount of deference and consequently have the cheek necessary to a commander. ~ George Orwell