[ExI] quote of the day

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Sat Jun 11 16:44:27 UTC 2016


“Aha, you are an advocate of useful knowledge”

“Certainly”

“You say that a man’s first job is to earn a living, and that the first
task of education is to equip him for that job?”

“Of course.”

“Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental
Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work
efficiently, if narrowly and with no extra bits or useless parts.  I like
the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless
but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a
reasonable amount of healthy dirt.  Shake the machine and it goes out of
order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new
position.”

Robertson Davies, in the Salterton trilogy
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