The true dawn of adulthood, of intellectual maturity, if you like, is the realization that adults are all fools.
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"The Pirates of Florida and Other Impossibilities", speech at the Conference on the Fantastic (1991), as published in Castle of Days (1992)Gene Wolfe
Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood. For as long as anyone tries to hold on to the advantages of childhood—the freedom from responsibility, principally—while seeking to lay claim to the best parts of adulthood, such as independence, he is an adolescent. [...] Eventually most people choose to be adults, or are forced into it. A very few retreat into childhood and never leave it again. A large number remain adolescents for life.
Gene Wolfe
"Adults have not understood children or adolescents and they are, as a consequence, in continual conflict with them. The remedy is not that adults should gain some new intellectual knowledge or achieve a higher standard of culture. No, they must find a different point of departure. The adult must find within himself the still unknown error that prevents him from seeing the child as he is." (Montessori, The Secret of Childhood, Ch.2)
Maria Montessori
The Truth that is to be Realized may be summarized simply as the Realization that no matter what is arising, no matter how many others are present, there is only One Being. This is precisely different from the childish but common religious notion that even when you are alone there is always Someone Else present, Who will look out for you if you do the right thing. True freedom is not a matter of striking a deal with an All-Powerful Parental Deity; no such God exists. True freedom is in the Realization that there is only God and You are That One.
Adi Da
There are three kinds of fools in this world, fools proper, educated fools and rich fools. The world persists because of the folly of these fools.
Swami Narayanananda
It astonished me that Gudrun, who has always thought in a very rational, intelligent way, has experienced what is almost a condition of euphoric self-realization, a really holy self-realization... To me, that is more of a shock than the fire of the arson itself—seeing a human being make her way to self-realization through such acts.
Gudrun Ensslin
Wolfe, Gene
Wolfe, Humbert
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