Quote for the day: Frye on the power of practical decision

"It follows that such a cliche as 'teaching the student to think for himself' is not a simple conception either...In real thinking we first study a given subject long enough to enable its laws and categories to take possession of our minds, after which we may move around inside the subject with some freedom. There is no real thought outside such disciplines...Of course a thinker should be able to return to society with an enormously heightened power of practical decision, but by that time he has lost interest in thinking for himself." ~~ Northrop Frye, "The Critical Discipline," an address to the Fellows of Sections I and II of the Royal Society of Canada, June 1960, included in his book On Education