63 Quotes by William Deresiewicz

The purpose of life becomes the accumulation of gold stars. Hence the relentless extracurricular busyness, the neglect of learning as an end in itself, the inability to imagine doing something that you can’t put on your resume. Hence the constant sense of competition.

Posting information is like pornography, a slick, impersonal exhibition.

It’s hard to build your soul when everyone around you is trying to sell theirs.

I have heard from many high-achieving students who have asked me whether it wasn’t possible to be invested both in learning for its own sake and in being at the top. No, I’ve said, it isn’t possible. Learning for its own sake means exactly what it says: learning is the only reason that you’re doing it, because learning is what matters.

A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” The desire to eliminate uncertainty eliminates life.

A real reader creates her own canon, for it consists precisely of those books that she has used to create herself.

Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurshi p comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.

As the sociologist Mitchell L. Stevens has put it, “affluent families fashion an entire way of life organized around the production of measurable virtue in children.” Measurable, here, means capable of showing up on a college application. We are not teaching to the test; we’re living to it.

Kids who have been raised under a regimen of positive reinforcement, and whose self-esteem depends on perfection, are not well equipped to handle criticism. Besides, they have better things to do than hit the books. At a big, public party school – let’s call it the University of Southern Football – that probably means beer and television. At elite colleges, it means those all-consuming extracurricular activities.