Category: Education

This is a rough suggestion for my Thoughtbook. The material is mixed, some sentences are in English, some in Swedish, as they are recorded in my mind. Some in both languages.

I spend a reasonable, not unreasonable, time to get every quote right. My life, if not yours, is too short for being a “quote nazi”. (But in the final book, if it materializes, I will check them all, I think.)

Since this page is constantly growing, please revisit. Note: New entries always at the top.

What is culture? To know what concerns one, and to know what it concerns one to know. [Aphorisms!]

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else’s.

The true index of a man’s character is the health of his wife.

Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother.

To live with someone and to live in someone are two fundamentally different matters. There are people in whom one can live without living with them, and vice versa.

Even the young man who believes in nothing needs a girl who believes in HIM.

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see
more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of
any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but
because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

Handeln… vilken upphöjd tanke hos det antika samhället att vilja förbjuda sin adel att syssla med den!

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

The superior man knows what is right. The inferior man knows what sells.

Hjälte blir man på en sekund, hederlig (god) människa får man vara hela livet.

I öknen vitna benen av de som, när de fick sitt livsmål i sikte, satte sig ner för att skriva en bok därom.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Some people, were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people, dance.

 We’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?

The detective didn’t carry a gun since it gave him a sense of security that was not earned.
Det räcker om riddarna applåderar.

Det är stort att tänka rätt men större att tänka fritt.

If you want to chain to hold
Bite on it, hard and bold.

Alla tycker om lukten av sin egen fis. / Eveybody likes the smell of their own fart.

Memory is the cause of more sins than Forgetfulness.

It would be a greater charity to starve the rich than to feed the poor.

Man kan inte göra omelett utan att krossa ägg.

In this theatre of man’s life it is given only to God and the Angels to be lookers-on.

Many a man has come to the top of the ladder to discover that it was raised against the wrong wall.

If something is worth doing it is worth doing well.

If something is worth doing it is worth doing badly.

 If the shoe fits you are not allowing for growth.

Det är inte hur man har det utan hur man tar det.

I pissed on a man who called me a dog. Why was he so surprised?

Memory is the cause of more sins than Forgetfulness.

It is far easier to respect one’s superiors than to find them.

Memory is the cause of more sins than Forgetfulness.

 I feel so much better, now that I have given up hope.

Lev så att du kan leva efter döden.

Om du vill att dina drömmar ska bli sanna, vakna!

Även den skönaste världsordning är att förlikna vid en på måfå hopskyfflad avskrädeshög.

Jag slängde bort min kopp när jag såg en pojke dricka ur handen.

De små tjuvarna hänger man, för de stora lyfter man på hatten.

Där alla tänker lika är det ingen som tänker särskilt mycket.

Lust är att göra det man har lust med. Vilja att göra det man inte vill.

Knowledge is addition, wisdom subtraction.

De stenade honom med ett minnesmärke.

The modesty of woman — she hides her beauty by trying to show it.

A little Knowledge is a dangerous thing, but much is absolutely fatal.

Fint folk kommer sent, de finaste kommer inte alls.

Truth cannot be told so as to be understood and not be believed.

If you consume attention, add value.

Tystnaden är fullkomningen av alla spruckna toner.

It is absurd to bring back a runaway slave. If a slave can survive without a master, is it not awful to admit that the master cannot live without a slave?

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Let’s suppose that I am in a position to make a decision about the education of youngsters. I know exactly what I would do. I would give them a special book to read when the inclination came over them.

This book might be grey and boring on the outside, but contain gems within. Or rather, seeds.

It could have an everyday ordinary name, like Thoughts, and that would be exactly what it contained. Or maybe Thoughtbook. That sounds a bit like Facebook, which of course is obligatory for every self-respecting (read self-doubting) teenager.

But doesn’t every school book contain thoughts? No. And if they do it is often a case of predigested, pre-chewed thoughts. My book would have none of that.

I hope you curiosity is growing like dough now. What then WOULD it contain?

As Pee Wee Herman would reply: Well, thoughts of course!

But short thoughts, or rather compressed thoughts. There are things that in a compressed state take almost no place at all but when you unfold or unfurl them they become surprisingly big. That would be the case with my thoughts as well.

They would be maybe one or two sentences long, no more. But they would be in a sense inflatable.

The reason for all this is my own life. The milestones in my life have not been teachers or mentors, but sentences.

Sentences made me do it — sometimes in a very direct concrete way. When I for example in 1993 did a futurist-inspired happening-protest on board a high speed train (Operation Tortoise) then that act was inspired and catapulted by a sentence from Francis Bacon.

“In this theater of man’s life, it is given only to God and the angels to be lookers-on.”

Had I never read that sentence, I might never had done what I did.

But enough of me. I do not think I am that different from others; I think that we can all be inspired, guided, even made wiser by – not books per se, not information, facts of Googling, but PROVERBS.

Yes, I really mean that. Proverbs, maxims, aphorisms. These are the short, inflatable, atomic thoughts that I would cram into my schoolbook.

But how would it be different from any book of quotations, you ask.

I don’t know. By me making the selection, I suppose. And doing the selection not with variety or entertainment value in mind, but only focusing on the potential for nourishing the young mind, heart and soul.

The school teachers might possibly look askance on my book, because it would contain some scandalous things. No, nothing sexual, that’s not scandalous any more, not since the Internet removed any blushing reflexes or innocence from children. No, I mean scandalous as in not respecting conformist, “respectable” truth.

The sentences would inspire kids to look beyond lip-service, double-talk and generally the cliches of the human mind. (Including teenage cliches.)

They would sometimes have a strange taste, as when you eat some nice food and suddenly bite into a stone. Some would be funny in way you wouldn’t share with your mum. Some would sound like stand up comedy. But the common theme would be that beyond their exterior they would be pregnant.

Or make YOU pregnant, with THEM.

To understand this right, let me tell you what happens when I read proverbs and aphorisms. I love collections of aphorisms, and feel that they should be read slowly, preferably one by one.

I don’t follow my own rules about this and sometimes just stuff myself with aphorisms. While doing this I am aware that they are not really digested, that when a great and memorable thought (really worth considering) is right away followed by another, and another, then none of them really get a chance to expand and bloom within me.

But that is not only bad. Because memory stores all of them, like seeds, and some days or weeks later, my mind starts to turn, chew, churn one of these thoughts.

WTF? What does  “Truth cannot be told so as to be understood and not be believed” mean??

And that confusion and irritated non-understanding could eventually turn into gold, into the proverbial pearl which is the result of an irritating grain of sand inside the oyster.

THAT is what I would do if I was in a position to make a decision about the education of youngsters. But I will do it anyway, have already started to collect and assemble a Thoughtbook.

Read it HERE.