Yes, you can make a person utter the words. If you have a sufficiently large rifle, you can also make them goose-step and murder their enemies.
You can hound them into submission, you can brainwash them, make them believe in nutty causes and blow themselves up, make them memorize the spelling of fifty thousand words, lull them into believing that the Grand Canyon was created by a giant hand, convince them that people of a different skin colour are animals, almost anything.
You can shape people with no end of methods and mechanations physical and psychological.
But you can't use any of this to make them learn. You can't make them understand.
Understanding is a voluntary act. It is the act of a free person, inhabiting a world in which he or she can interact with a stimulating and diverse environment, creating a rich fabric of what we would call thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes, fears, and all the rest of it.
Understanding and learning are the results of a life-long process of experience and growth.
You can present the things you think are important and should be valued, but people must accept these for themselves. Freely.
Quotations are extremely effective at capturing and concisely communicating thoughts and ideas. They can be inspirational but more importantly quotations can help us reveal and assess the assumptions, values and beliefs that underlie the ways in which we perceive the world.
I have compiled over 800 quotations and short excerpts on this website. It is an eclectic mix but most of them are inspirational or insightful in nature and relate to knowledge, learning or personal development in some form.
If you love quotations as much as I do then you may wish to register to have a quote e-mailed to you once a week or more frequently by clicking on the button below and completing the form.
Yes, you can make a person utter the words. If you have a sufficiently large rifle, you can also make them goose-step and murder their enemies.
You can hound them into submission, you can brainwash them, make them believe in nutty causes and blow themselves up, make them memorize the spelling of fifty thousand words, lull them into believing that the Grand Canyon was created by a giant hand, convince them that people of a different skin colour are animals, almost anything.
You can shape people with no end of methods and mechanations physical and psychological.
But you can't use any of this to make them learn. You can't make them understand.
Understanding is a voluntary act. It is the act of a free person, inhabiting a world in which he or she can interact with a stimulating and diverse environment, creating a rich fabric of what we would call thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes, fears, and all the rest of it.
Understanding and learning are the results of a life-long process of experience and growth.
You can present the things you think are important and should be valued, but people must accept these for themselves. Freely.
If you are interested in Knowledge Management, the
Knowledge Café
or the role of conversation in organizational life then you my be interested in this online book I am writing on
Conversational Leadership
The Gurteen Knowledge Community is a global learning community
of over 21,000 people in 160 countries across the world.
The community is for people who are committed to making a difference:
people who wish to share and learn from each other and who strive to see
the world differently, think differently and act differently.
Membership of the Gurteen Knowledge Community is free.
Yes, you can make a person utter the words. If you have a sufficiently large rifle, you can also make them goose-step and murder their enemies.
Yes, you can make a person utter the words. If you have a sufficiently large rifle, you can also make them goose-step and murder their enemies.
