Because in this topsy-turvy modern world, full of unkindness and windbag bluster, S.T.U.D.E.N.T. (Seeking These Unending Discoveries and Electrified Neurons Tirelessly) Mindset is something impossibly beautiful and impossibly fragile. To make fun of it is to corrode yr own soul — to estrange yourself from what’s most beautiful about humanity, and to forget that you are, at your best, a student too.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

“You walk down your high street. What do you prefer to see there? The economist will say: Walmart, Best Buy, the Gap. Scale economies — cheaper prices — better for “consumers”! But the human being will say: an independent cafe, a good bookshop, a boutique clothing store. Why? Because they offer many things that mega scale organizations don’t”

Death denial is the ultimate form of time entitlement