Christina Hoff Sommers Quotes

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

I think there is a rage against women. I've come to see that now although at the time I did not notice it. I was preoccupied with my teaching and my writing.

Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

Teaching regularly has made me an even more adept reader, I think. The kind of teaching I do is more like editing than anything else. The kind of editing book editors used to do before lunch. The kind of editing I used to do as a radio documentary maker.

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

Women's studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink . It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women.

If I'm teaching deep things, then I view it as important to make people feel like they're learning deep things, because otherwise, they will still have a hole in their mind for "deep truths" that needs filling, and they will go off and fill their heads with complete nonsense that has been written in a more satisfying style.

But this same process of the old teaching the young can also cause errors and false conclusions to accumulate with the passage of time. One should therefore study ancient writings, not so much in the hope of finding lost wisdom as in the hope of locating the origin of errors that have been, and still are, accepted truths.

I can do as much work as any man ... We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights, we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough of our own.

A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

Obviously I find women more interesting than men to write about.

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.

If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.

Schools teach ignorance.

The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.

It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.

Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.

I imagine that thinking is the great desideratum of the present age; and the cause of whatever is done amiss may justly be reckoned the general neglect of education in those who need it most, the people of fashion. What can be expected where those who have the most influence have the least sense, and those who are sure to be followed set the worst examples?

All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.

I believe that one of the most damning things about our culture is the adage to never talk religion and politics. Because we don't model this discourse at the dinner table and at Thanksgiving, we don't know how to do it well and we're not teaching our children about the world and about how to discuss it.

You have all these people in the press who are ringing their hands over fake news stories. That actually became the narratives for critics.

in writing, sex doesn't matter; it's the writing that matters.

Oh, children, growing up to be Adventurers into sophistry, Forbear, forbear to be of those That read the rood to learn the rose.

Always read with a pen in your hands, not beside you on the table, but actually in your hand, ready, armed ... Put a question mark by everything you find suspect. Underline anything you really appreciate. Feel free to write 'splendid,' but also, 'I don't believe a word of it.' And even 'bullshit.'