Simon Soloveychik (1930 – 1996)
Russian writer, educator, and philosopher.
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What is the internally free man free from? First of all - he or she is free from fear of people and life; from conventional opinion. He or she is independent from the crowd, from stereotypical thinking. He or she is able to have their own personal point of view; free from prejudices. He or she is free from envy, selfishness and from aggressive personal drives.
A vicious teacher is just a vicious teacher, as a vicious neighbor may happen to be. But a vicious mother - means that the whole world is vicious.
A free man - is a man who is free internally. As all other people, externally he or she depends on society. Internally he or she is independent. A society can become liberated externally - from oppression, but it can become free only when the majority of people are free internally.
A child gets sick with a chronic disease of unhappiness not from unhappy circumstances but from unhappy people around him. Unhappy people cannot raise happy children; it’s impossible.
To see a man as beautiful – means to make him really beautiful. There is no cunning, no deceit; this happens every time, everyone knows that.
Fears to look bad in front of other people, to say something wrong, to be laughed at - all those fears deprive us of half of our abilities. This is one of the main school problems. That teacher understands it, who can teach students to study without fear of the teacher, without fear of classmates, and, the most important, without fear of a subject.
A son is not a judge of his father, but the conscience of the father is in his son.
Integrity has a high psychological and philosophical value, for many people it is a highest value, it associate with health of soul. Dualism, contradiction, torments of hesitation - is something of illness, integrity is health, people strive for it instinctively.
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