English words Quote by Matthew B. Crawford

“The truth about idiocy... is that it is at once an ethical and cognitive failure... The Greek idios means 'private,' and idiotes means a private person, as opposed to a person in their public role... This still comes across in the related English words 'idiomatic' and 'idiosyncratic,' which…” quote by Matthew B. Crawford — Download Open image

““The truth about idiocy... is that it is at once an ethical and cognitive failure... The Greek idios means 'private,' and idiotes means a private person, as opposed to a person in their public role... This still comes across in the related English words 'idiomatic' and 'idiosyncratic,' which similarly suggest self-enclosure... At the bottom, the idiot is a solipsist.””

Matthew B. Crawford

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More by Matthew B. Crawford

“The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error…

Matthew B. Crawford

“When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: "All…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a…

Matthew B. Crawford

“I used to try to hypnotize myself into a Zen-like state of resignation at the outset. It doesn't work, not for this grasshopper. I…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking.…

Matthew B. Crawford

“...if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life. This understanding may be hard to articulate; bringing it more fully into view is the task of moral inquiry. Such inquiry may be helped along by practical activities in company with others, a sort of conversation in deed. In this…

Matthew B. Crawford

“I was nearing a familiar point where I’ve descended through every level of madness and despair, and a certain calm takes over. I was…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“The lover of excellence is prone to being drawn out of himself, erotically almost, in a way that the universalist egalitarian is not. The…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“I did not even look at the scoreboard when my routine was done in 1976. My teammates started pointing because there was this uproar"…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“There is a classic psychology experiment that seems to confirm Brewer's point. Children who enjoy drawing were given marker pens and allowed to go…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“Stripped of the kind of judgments that are at the very heart of the idea of "credit", shot through with bad faith, [the mortgage…

Matthew B. Crawford

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“...it is often the case that when things get really hairy, you want an experienced human being in control. The preference for algorithms over…

Matthew B. Crawford

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More English words quotes

“My goal is to act as a faithful interpreter, preserving as much of the original's nuances of meaning as possible without embellishment or omission. Yet a translator must also balance fidelity to the source, aptness of expression, and beauty of style. The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The…

Ken Liu

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted…

Virginia Woolf

“When it first appeared in the language in the early seventeenth century, affiliate meant ‘to adopt a child’ – or, as the English lexicographer…

Paul Anthony Jones

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Impossible isn't found in the dictionary, at least in mine. When trying to define it, I couldn't find a meaning more expressive than the word it self; Impossible--> I'm Possible Don't let English words mislead you. Nowhere it self says Now Here. Never say I can't just rise your head up high after all it's all up to you and…

Aiman N

Most of us would be upset if we were accused of being "silly." But the word "silly" comes from the old English word "selig,"…

Zig Ziglar

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“They then named one day after the Moon and another after the Sun, giving them a seven-day week. Seven was regarded as a perfect number; and the Sumerian week is of course our week, its days still named in the Sumerian fashion, though with Roman or Old English words. Saturn becomes Saturday, Sol (‘the sun’ in Latin) becomes Sunday. Luna,…

Andrew Marr

When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but…

Annie Dillard