The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

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When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.

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The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

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Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

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None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.

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The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.

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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

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Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

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To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

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