Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. - John Dewey

But the live creature adopts its past; it can make friends with even its stupidities, using them as warnings that increase present wariness. Instead of trying to live upon whatever may have been achieved in the past, it uses past successes to inform the present. Every living experience owes its richness to what Santayana well calls “hushed reverberations.

ان التهديد الخطير الذي يواجه ديمقراطيتنا ليس هو وجود دول تسلطية شمولية ، بل انه الوجود داخل مواقفنا الشخصية وداخل مؤسساتنا هو الذي يعطي انتصارا للسلطة الخارجية والنظام والهيمنة والاعتماد على (الزعيم) في الدول الاجنبية . ومن ثم ايضا فان ساحة المعركة هي هنا - داخل انفسنا ومؤسساتنا.

Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future. The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. If impetus in this direction is weakened instead of being intensified, something much more than mere lack of preparation takes place. The pupil is actually robbed of native capacities which otherwise would enable him [sic] to cope with the circumstances that he meets in the course of his life. We often see persons who have had little schooling and in whose case the absence of set schooling proves to be a positive asset. They have at least retained their native common sense and power of judgement, and its exercise in the actual conditions of living has given them the precious gift of ability to learn from the experiences they have.