A Quote by Carl Sagan
Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule.
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Features have a specification cost, a design cost, and a development cost. There is a testing cost and a reliability cost. ... Features have a documentation cost. Every feature adds pages to the manual increasing training costs.
Essentially, social education is moral education, and moral education is preparation for citizenship... When Jefferson and others advocated public education, it was to prepare for citizenship in a new, constitutional, democratic society.
One of the reasons some of the advocates of ever larger government and more government intrusiveness get nervous about discussions of the actual cost of government is that they fear if the people had a discussion about what government costs, the true cost of taxes, that they might not want as much government as they are presently getting.
And having thoughtlessly polluted our streams and rivers, we have seen in recent years a rapidly growing market for bottled drinking water. I am sure that some will say that a rapidly growing market for water is "good for the economy," and most of us are still affluent enough to pay the cost. Nevertheless, it is a considerable cost that we are now paying for drinkable water, which we once had in plentiful supply at little cost or none at all. And the increasing of the cost suggests that the time may come when the cost will be unaffordable.
The cost of obedience is small compared with the cost of disobedience.
I truly believed that the cost of success for us shouldn't be the cost of failure for a good friend.
If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance.
A public option is essential to creating the cost-savings necessary to offset the cost of providing all Americans access to affordable health care.
We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.
The first thing we should acknowledge is that poverty is hugely expensive. It varies from country to country, but most of the time it's around 3, 4 or 5% of GDP. If you look at what it would cost just to top up the income of all the poor people in a country, it would cost about 1% of GDP.
How can the cost of education be the cost of life? It is unacceptable; it is reprehensible that we have allowed it to fester.
But, Jefferson worried that the people - and the argument goes back to Thucydides and Aristotle - are easily misled. He also stressed, passionately and repeatedly, that it was essential for the people to understand the risks and benefits of government, to educate themselves, and to involve themselves in the political process. Without that, he said, the wolves will take over.
Situational unawareness in the private marketplace or on the battlefield will cost you your livelihood or your life. In the Age of Obama, however, such willful ignorance is a job prerequisite. The less you know the better.
The ethical rule is from Samuel Johnson who believed that maintenance of easily removable ignorance by a responsible office holder was treacherous malfeasance in meeting moral obligation. The prudential rule is that underlying the old Warner & Swasey advertisement for machine tools: "The man who needs a new machine tool, and hasn't bought it, is already paying for it". The Warner & Swasey rule also applies, I believe, to thinking tools. If you don't have the right thinking tools, you, and the people you seek to help, are already suffering from your easily removable ignorance.
My father taught us that to thrive, excellence in technology, quality, and customer service along with cost competitiveness is a prerequisite. His contribution to business, the economy, and society at large can never be underscored enough.
It is not the job of the Department of Education to maximize profits for the government at the cost of squeezing students who are struggling to get an education.
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