Quote of the Day

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

W.B. Yeats

LATER: An email from Barry McMullin tells me that it’s probably a misattribution. It’s not clear that Yeats ever said it, and if he did he was paraphrasing Plutarch:

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”

Which suggests where Amazon got the name for its eReader.

Quis custodiet…?

Nice quote from Krugman.

Catherine Rampell comments skeptically on Peter Orszag’s call for delegating more policy to panels of nonpolitical experts. I’d add that this is an odd time to make such a proposal. Yes, the political world is deeply dysfunctional — but what’s equally remarkable is just how terrible the judgment of the supposed experts has been. It’s not just the complete failure to foresee this crisis. Fancy international organizations have been persistently offering disastrous advice, counseling austerity and interest rate hikes just as the recovery, such as it is, stumbles. Politicians say dumb things about monetary policy — but so does the ECB.

The point is that what we need are the right ideas, not the right sort of people. Madmen in authority come in all forms, and the dignified men in suits are often no better than the rabble-rousers.

On difficulty

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Leon Tolstoy – 1897

Quote of the Day

Now that the Liberal Democrats are more assertively opposed, I cannot see how the Coalition can stand aside and let the BSkyB deal go ahead. But the potential significance of what has happened is bigger than one deal, and can be conveyed in a single question: If there were an election tomorrow which party leaders would want the endorsement of Rebekah Brooks? A week ago they would have died for it.

Steve Richards, writing in today’s Independent.

Quote of the day

“Without data, you are just another person with an opinion …”

Andreas Schleicher.

Reminds me of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s remark that “everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts”.