Thomas Sowell -

There is really nothing very mysterious about why our public schools are failures. When you select the poorest quality college students to be public school teachers, give them iron-clad tenure, a captive audience, and pay them according to seniority rather than performance, why should the results be surprising?

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.

Fjordman, again -

The Multiculturalist uncreated mankind in his own image: Confused, self-loathing individuals with no concept of right or wrong. And he didn’t create them male of female. He said that they were identical, and that claiming otherwise was sexist. And the Multiculturalist cursed them and said, “Be barren and decrease in numbers, vanish from the face of the earth, let Mother Nature rule and the fish of the sea and the birds of the air reclaim the world.” The Multiculturalist then said, “Let here be darkness,” and there was darkness. The Multiculturalist saw that the darkness was good, and he unseparated the darkness from the light. The Multiculturalist called the light “discrimination and bigotry,” and the darkness he called “tolerance.” On the seventh day, the Multiculturalist rested, and he saw that it was good. He had unmade reason, he had unmade logic, he had unmade truth, he had unmade the very reason and desire to exist. And there was evening on the seventh day, but there was no new morning.

Fjordman -

There is probably a new Great Idea for every generation. It changes just enough for people to be duped again, but it always entails some form of large-scale change for millions of people. The less it corresponds to reality, the better. The point is to outbid others in Utopian ideas. What is behind it? Well, the joy of destroying the Established Order to bring purpose into otherwise purposeless lives and the desire to immerse oneself into grandiose ideas. The desire for personal power and the joy of being able to harass opponents shouldn’t be underestimated, either. If you claim that your Utopian ideas are about justice and equality, you can also claim that those who disagree with you are proponents of injustice and inequality, in other words evil, and outside the boundaries of civilized debate. One should always be mindful of people who profess an ideology that entails sweeping changes to society, claim that this represents the unstoppable tide of history, and yet for some reason need to shut down critics through intimidation. If their ideology is so great, how come they are so reluctant to accept criticism? Good ideas can be rationally defended. If people resist critical scrutiny of their ideas, this is usually a powerful indication of the fact that these ideas are neither truthful nor desirable.

Galileo -

I believe that good philosophers fly alone, like eagles and not in flocks like starlings. It is true that because eagles are rare birds they are little seen and less heard, while birds that fly like starlings fill the sky with shrieks and cries, and wherever they settle befoul the earth beneath them.

John Galsworthy -

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.