Errico Malatesta Quotes

If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.

I want simply to learn about the world and live freely.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expression. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth..

To me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet. That I haven’t understood enough. That I can’t know enough. That I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom… Those who tell you that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority: don’t think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside, however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

Any educated person recognizes that curiosity and creativity aren't just important; they are among the essential human activities.

I have never been convinced throughout my life that one needs to be imitating others. I even tell my daughters not to look at me as a model. Everyone's condition is different, and the way that each person lives his or her life is different. What is important is that one utilizes one's intellect and not to be 100 percent sure about one's convictions. One should always leave room for doubt.

The only way in which one human being can properly attempt to influence another is by encouraging him to think for himself, instead of endeavoring to instill ready-made opinions into his head.

Opinions are made to be changed - or how is truth to be got at?

For me, I want my kids to find their way. If they're interested in something, I want them to try it out.

Education must, be not only a transmission of culture but also a provider of alternative views of the world and a strengthener of the will to explore them.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

There is no such thing as an unreasonable question, or a silly question, or a frivolous question, or a waste-of-time question. It's your life, and you've got to get these answers.

Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.

I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.

When someone asks me to do something, something new, something I don't know about, and if I haven't done it, I'll say yes. Just so I can try something new. You never know what you might like.

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.

No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.

I believe that the best way to help people understand the world is to provide them with opportunities to actively explore, experiment, and express themselves.

I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.