Henry Steele Commager Quotes

Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education.

Looking back on a 30-year teaching career full of rewards and prizes, somehow I can't completely believe that I spent my time on earth institutionalized; I can't believe that centralized schooling is allowed to exist at all as a gigantic indoctrination and sorting machine, robbing people of their children. Did it really happen? Was this my life? God help me.

You are great young people. I have said again and again, we have the finest generation of young people ever in the history of this Church. I believe it. You know the gospel better. You come to seminary and you learn about the things of the Lord here. You know more about the gospel than those of my generation at your age did without any question. I am satisfied of that. Furthermore, you are intrinsically better. You are wonderful young people!

Young people, I happen to believe, are the world's most precious natural resource.

While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.

I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals.

At the moment I would like to emphasize the need for vocational training, for non-formal education in Burma to help all those young people who have suffered from a bad education. They have to be trained to earn their living. They have to have enough education vocational training to be able to set up respectable lives for themselves.

Ebola is not just a health crisis. Across West Africa, a generation of young people risks being lost to an economic catastrophe.

A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education.

NCS - National Citizen Service is a fantastic programme. I want it to be available for every young person in the country.

I hate to see prudence clinging to the green suckers of youth; 'tis like ivy round a sapling, and spoils the growth of the tree.

Youth Ministry, as traditionally organized, has also suffered the impact of social changes. Young people often fail to find responses to their concerns, needs, problems and hurts in the usual structures. As adults, we find it hard to listen patiently to them, to appreciate their concerns, demands, and to speak to them in a language they can understand.

Young people are going to go to someone, somewhere. And we had better see that that 'someone' is us when the opportunity is ours, for there will come a time when we will wish they would come, and do we know but that the interruption we now impatiently put off may be the most important thing we could be doing at this particular time?

Where there is peace, there is sports; where there is sports, there is peace. Peace is what allows us, especially young people, to dream, go after ones goals and prepare you for the next challenge in life.

I used to teach. I quote American history and I love words. I've read the dictionary I don't know how many times throughout my life. People say, "You read the dictionary?" I say, "Yes, and you can really believe it."

My connection to Santa Fe is very closely, and continuously a connection with Reid. I believe in him and his philosophy of photographic education.

Sartre said that hell is other people, I believe that most of them are

You young people yourselves are capable of performing anything. Our inventors can invent in a high level. Our innovators can innovate in a high level, only if they keep self confidence and believe that we can.

So when people ask me if I believe God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the earth; the earth is a sphere, it doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.

You know that I don't believe that anyone has ever taught anything to anyone. I question that efficacy of teaching. The only thing that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them. My philosophy is to stay as close as possible to what's happening. If I can't solve something, how the hell can I expect my managers to.

I think a mentor gets a lot of satisfaction in a couple of ways. They're doing something constructive, so they feel good about that. And when they see the results of this, with the young people they're working with, it's very, very rewarding.

All of us have to do a better job of teaching young people not to let themselves be defined by the words other people use against them.

The education of young people in science is at least as important, maybe more so, than the research itself.

There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.