Brian P. Cleary Quotes

Kids enjoy laughing and are seldom bored when they find something funny. They also ask questions, often to adults, because they understand that the more words they can comprehend about a funny story or a joke, the more they'll enjoy it.

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there.

I never believe them when they say that because you really have to sort of be aware of what's going on in the news in order to get the jokes on the show.

Some people say video games rot your brain, but I think they work different muscles that maybe you don't normally use.

In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth.

Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask.

Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge.

If you have a therapist who agrees with your every word, then your brain isn't getting proper exercise.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

Writing is mentally stimulating; it's like a puzzle that makes you think all the time.

I sing in Hungarian. I read Hungarian. I do not pretend to speak Hungarian, but I sing in languages that I have studied as languages. And I find that to be central and very, very helpful. I think if you're not really cognizant of what every single word means, I think that might be a little tricky.

My English is closer to the literary English, and I'm not very familiar with jokes in English or with, you know, with small talk in English.

Preschool children are virtuosos of imagination.

It is the children between five and seven who are the word-lovers. It is they who show a predisposition toward such study. Their undeveloped minds can not yet grasp a complete idea with distinctness. They do, however, understand words. And they may be entirely carried away by their ecstatic, their tireless interest in the parts of speech.

It's an important thing for children to be able to make up their own words.

If it's taught well, art really is important to kids early on. It helps children develop language and allows them to see themselves in a way that isn't right or wrong, because if they draw an animal with five legs instead of four, nobody's criticizing them for it.

I reserve the right to think many different things and to change my mind and to even be wrong.

We become adolescents when the words that adults exchange with one another become intelligible to us.

When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut.

You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.

You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don't have, at the back of yourminds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.

Thinking is a bit uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. A matter of time and practice.

Even today no computer can understand language as well as a three-year-old or see as well as a mouse.

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.