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William Deresiewicz Biography

William Deresiewicz (/dəˈrɛzəwɪts/ də-REZ-ə-wits) is an American author, essayist, and literary critic. Born in 1964 in Englewood, New Jersey, Deresiewicz attended Columbia University before teaching English at Yale University from 1998-2008. He is the author of A Jane Austen Education, How Six Novels Taught me About Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter (Penguin Press, 2011) and Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (Free Press, 2014). His All Points blog appeared on the American Scholar website from March 2011 to September 2013.

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William Deresiewicz Quotes

There's no doubt about it: fun people are fun. But I finally learned that there is something more important, in the people you know, than whether they are fun. Thinking about those friends who had given me so much pleasure but who had also caused me so much pain, thinking about that bright, cruel world to which they'd introduced me, I saw that there's a better way to value people. Not as fun or not fun, or stylish or not stylish, but as warm or cold, generous or selfish. People who think about others and people who don't. People who know how to listen, and people who only know how to talk.

Fun, Introduced, Pain, Selfish, Think

We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

Doubt, Errors, Impulse, Proceed, Trial, Trial And Error

Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurshi p comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan.

Adventure, Art, Autonomy, Imagination, Plan

As some people say, we're already in a Singularity relative to ancient Grecians, inasmuch as they couldn't understand our world at all. . . and I think it's true in the opposite direction, too.

Opposites, Our World, Think, Thinking, Understand, World

Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people's ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself.

Concentrating, Developing, Ideas, Mean, Thinking, Useful

People’s stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can do for them.

Attention, Important, People, Peoples, Personal, Thing

Hence the vogue for double majors. It isn’t enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus, to roam freely across the academic fields, making serendipitous connections and discoveries, the way that American higher education was designed (uniquely, among the world’s systems) to allow you to do.

Connections, Discovery, Enough, Focus, Primary

If you're oblivious to other people, chances are pretty good that you're going to hurt them.

Chance, Hurt, Oblivious, People, Pretty

But it is not the job of truth to make us feel good. It is the job of truth to be true, and it is our job to deal with it.

Being True, Deal, Feel Good, Good, Jobs, Truth

Don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.

Fear, Highly, Mistake, Nets, Play, Stronger

If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts

Alone, Follow, Ifs, Learn, Thoughts, Want

Life, if you live it right, keeps surprising you, and the thing that keeps surprising you the most…is yourself

Ifs, Keeps, Life, Right, Surprising

Posting information is like pornography, a slick, impersonal exhibition.

Exhibition, Exhibitions, Information, Posting, Slick

People don't mind being in prison as long as no one else is free. But stage a jailbreak, and everybody else freaks out.

Jailbreak, Long, Mind, People