Educators From The United States

"Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns."

"As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants."

"Beauty least adorned is most adorned"

"The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette."

"It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day,—this is the work of genius."

"The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope."

"The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation."

"The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image."

"We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man."

"The genius is childlike. Like children he looks into the world as into a new creation and finds there a perennial source of wonder and delight."

"Drunkards and sensualists have become heroes and saints; but sluggards have never risen to the significance and worth of human beings. Sloth enfeebles the root of life, and degrades more surely, if less swiftly, than the sins of passion."

"If thou need money, get it in an honest way—by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books."

"The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects."

"In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied."

"To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds."

"The important thing is how we know, not what or how much."

"Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory."

"As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought."

"No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us."

"We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men."

"God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?"

"Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion."

"Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true."

"It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way."

"When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring."

"Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle."

"Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble."

"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."

"Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and reminds you who you could be with a little work."

"There is nothing perfect. There is only life."

"Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here."

"People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life."

"We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night."

"And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it."

"It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away."

"When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid."

"In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional."

"I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only thing I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so transparent I felt like I could see through to something pure inside them. My chest ached then, too, this very same way."

"I am surprised that the blacklist did not include the Pope, Henry Kissinger, Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs, Stephen Walt, Barry Posen, and other prominent figures who have made arguments similar to mine and others already on the list."

"Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard have been listed by Ukraine among a number of American politicians, academics and activists Kyiv claims have promoted "Russian propaganda."... The list—which also includes retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, military strategist Edward Luttwak, political scientist John Mearsheimer and journalist Glenn Greenwald—does not explain what the consequences are for those who Ukraine clearly considers responsible for promoting the Kremlin's line.... Mearsheimer is on Ukraine's blacklist for having said NATO provoked Vladimir Putin into war... Mearsheimer... [said] he was disappointed with being listed as a Russian propagandist, while he defended his claim that the war was provoked by the U.S. wanting to accept Ukraine into NATO."

"“Other political scientists work on capillaries. John goes for the jugular”"

"The Great Delusion is a provocative and timely work. But Mearsheimer’s account of the political theories that underpin liberal hegemony is confused and in some respects plainly wrong, while the prospect of American policymakers converging on a consistently realist approach to foreign relations seems remote. One difficulty is that Mearsheimer bases his argument for realism on a misconceived dichotomy. For him, liberalism comes in two versions: progressive liberalism, which favours active government intervention in order to promote positive rights to welfare alongside negative freedoms from censorship and the like, and modus vivendi liberalism, which focuses on the protection of these negative freedoms above all else. Progressive liberals to have come to prominence over the past fifty years ‘include Ronald Dworkin, Francis Fukuyama, Steven Pinker, and John Rawls’. Modus vivendi liberals of recent times, Mearsheimer tells us, include myself and the American political theorist Stephen Holmes. In a longer time frame, ‘John Locke is a quintessential modus vivendi liberal, as are Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek.’ It is flattering to be included in such distinguished company, but Mearsheimer’s analysis reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. No political theorist of whom I am aware would represent Locke, still less Hayek, as a theorist of modus vivendi liberalism. Both were classical liberals who prioritised negative freedom from coercion by the state over other freedoms and values. The progressive liberals Mearsheimer cites hold to a more positive conception of freedom that includes endowing people with the capacities needed for effective action. Such liberals recognise important rights to equality and welfare. Modus vivendi liberals do not fit into this dichotomy since they are ready to promote both positive and negative liberties if they can be shown to help individuals and communities with different beliefs and values to coexist productively in society. The canonical thinker of modus vivendi liberalism is not Locke but Hobbes, for whom all rights, other than the right to avoid a violent death, are subject to the overriding imperative of peace. Such a misunderstanding might not seem too damaging to Mearsheimer’s argument for realism, but it is not without consequences. Mearsheimer suggests that modus vivendi liberalism might offer a template for the kind of realist foreign policy he favours. Yet Lockean liberalism, which he invokes in support of his argument, sits uneasily with realism because Lockean rights are universal. For classical liberals as for progressive liberals, only one kind of regime can be fully legitimate: one that respects human rights, however defined. All other regimes are at best approximations of this ideal. Because its principles are supposed to be universally authoritative, Lockean theory has a built-in bias in favour of liberal hegemony. It is easy to move from the belief that liberal regimes are everywhere the best to the belief that existing liberal regimes have a duty to promote similar regimes throughout the world. (Modus vivendi liberals, by contrast, reject the idea that any regime could be the best for everyone.) Classical liberals have an inherent tendency to support what is now called liberal interventionism."

"I think that nuclear war is most likely if the Russians are losing. If the Russians are losing, if the Ukrainian military is rolling up Russian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine, and the sanctions are working and the Russians are on the verge of being knocked out of the ranks of the great powers, in that situation I think it's likely that the Russians would turn to nuclear weapons, and they would use those nuclear weapons in Ukraine. They would not dare use them against NATO, but they would turn to nuclear weapons. I think, given the fact that the Russians are not losing and, if anything, are winning, therefore the likelihood of nuclear war is greatly reduced. I don't want to say it's been taken off the table for one second, but I think as long as the Russians are on the upside of the battle, not on the downside, the likelihood of nuclear use is very low."

"The Russians are bent on keeping the territory that they have now conquered, and I believe the Russians are intent on conquering more country, more of Ukraine. The Russians want to make sure that Ukraine ends up as a dysfunctional rump state and cannot become a viable member of NATO at any time in the future. So, I think that what the Russians will end up doing is cleaving off a huge chunk of Ukrainian territory, and then going to great lengths to keep Ukraine in a terrible—both economic and political—situation. They'll do everything they can to continue strangling the Ukrainian economy, because they do not want Ukraine to be in a position where it becomes a viable member of the Western alliance."

"People in the West don't want to hear it, but it is true that the Russians were desperate to avoid a conflict. The idea that Putin was chomping at the bit to invade Ukraine so he could make it part of Greater Russia, it's just not a serious argument. The Russians did not want a war, and they did, I believe, everything possible to avoid a war. They just couldn't get the Americans to play ball with them. The Americans were unwilling to negotiate in a serious way. Period. End of story."

"The strategically wise strategy for Ukraine is to break off its close relations with the West, especially with the United States, and try to accommodate the Russians. If there had been no decision to move nato eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine."

"If Russia thinks that Ukraine presents an existential threat to Russia because it is aligning with the United States and its West European allies, this is going to cause an enormous amount of damage to Ukraine. That of course is exactly what’s happening now."

"My argument is that... {Vladimir Putin]... not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine."

"We invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe.... This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him (Vladimir Putin). My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible."

"With Ukraine, it’s very important to understand that, up until 2014, we did not envision NATO expansion and E.U. expansion as a policy that was aimed at containing Russia. Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a threat before February 22, 2014."