A Quote by Gerda Lerner

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.

Gerda Lerner

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Acted Actions Actions Have Consequences Always Analogy Be Different Cannot Certain Choices Circumstances Consequences Demands Determine Different Events Example Future Future Events Generations History How Human Human Actions Learn Made Main Main Thing Making Once Other Our Past Past Generations Possibility Problems Solved Teach Than Thing Thought Thus Time Undone Us Were Will

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Gerda Lerner
American - Historian
April 30, 1920 - January 2, 2013

The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences, and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone.

Gerda Lerner

By instructing students how to learn, unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy of the Human Resources Research Organization phrases it simply: 'The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction — how to teach himself. Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.'

Alvin Toffler

In this life we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices. Making perfect choices all of the time is not possible. It just doesn't happen. But it is possible to make good choices we can live with and grow from.

James E. Faust

If we don't accept the uncomfortable proposition that every perpetrator of virtually every act of evil in our history has been a human being like us, then we actually foreclose the possibility of understanding how we do this to one another and therefore make it impossible to figure out how we might prevent these things.

Joshua Oppenheimer

Though some choices may slow our journey, every path we take gives us more familiarity with how our actions affect the world around us, giving us more opportunities to learn how to help ourselves and others.

Matthew Underwood

Once upon a time, there was a clear set of choices that people made. Now there are so many choices of how to think, how to define ourselves.

Tamar Jacoby

What happened on "As Cool As I Am" was, you know how in the `90s, "the personal is political, the political is personal"? That was a really big thing. Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.

Dar Williams

One of the things that has really hit home for me is that the world is how we decide it is going to be. Very few things just happen. They grow out of history, and they grow out of the present, and the more we can get a sense of how our actions lead into other actions in the future, hopefully we'll learn to make better decisions.

Deborah Ellis

Culture is an abstraction; it cannot actually be seen or touched.... We see people acting in agreed-upon ways in the face of similar situations...we notice people moving their bodies in certain ways - making choices in their lives about where to live, what to eat, how to learn, how to work and love - in response to similar events and experiences, and say: "oh, these people belong to the same culture".

H. Ned Seelye

Life is like a game where you seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals. You get better at this game through practice. The game consists of a series of choices that have consequences. You can't stop the problems and choices from coming at you, so it's better to learn how to deal with them.

Ray Dalio

Today’s events are tomorrow’s history, yet events seen by the naked eye lack the depth and breadth of human struggles, triumphs and suffering. Writing history is writing the soul of the past… so that the present generation may learn from past mistakes, be inspired by their ancestor’s sacrifices, and take responsibility for the future.

Epifanio de los Santos

I studied other singers, so I would learn how to phrase, and learn how to breathe. And the main thing was, I learned how to inhabit my song.

Bruce Springsteen

I feel history is more of a story than a lesson. I know this idea of presentism: this idea of constantly evoking the past to justify the present moment. A lot of people will tell you, "history is how we got here." And learning from the lessons of history. But that's imperfect. If you learn from history you can do things for all the wrong reasons.

Sarnath Banerjee

Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time, and not be discouraged at the rests. If we say sadly to ourselves, "There is no music in a rest," let us not forget " there is the making of music in it." The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson!

John Ruskin

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.

Tony Robbins

In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.

Stephen Covey

A Quote by Gerda Lerner

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