Leah Hager Cohen Quotes

• There is nowhere morning does not go.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Morning, Doe

  45 Copy quote

• The ability to know one’s limitations, to recognize the bounds of one’s own comprehension—this is a kind of knowing that approaches wisdom.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Knowing, Kind, Ability

  Leah Hager Cohen (2013). “I don't know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn't)”, p.25, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

• People cheat when they are afraid. When there is no cost to being wrong or confessing ignorance, there is no reason to cheat or fake comprehension.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Cheating, Ignorance, People

  Leah Hager Cohen (2013). “I don't know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance (Except When You Shouldn't)”, p.9, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• For why are we here if not to try to fathom one another? Not through facts alone, but with the full extent of our imaginations. And what are stories if not tools for imagining?

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Imagination, Trying, Tools

  Leah Hager Cohen (2014). “No Book but the World: A Novel”, p.180, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• The truth beyond the fetish's glimmering mirage is the relationship of laborer to product; it is the social account of how that object came to be. In this view every commodity, beneath the mantle of its pricetag, is a hieroglyph ripe for deciphering, a riddle whose solution lies in the story of the worker who made it and the conditions under which it was made.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Lying, Views, Stories

  9 Copy quote

• Every sad thing, every loss or hurt really a challenge to love that much more, really just another of beauty's many strongholds.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Hurt, Loss, Challenges

  Leah Hager Cohen (2003). “Heart, You Bully, You Punk”, Viking Press

  4 Copy quote

• In England, coffeehouses were dubbed penny-universities, because for the admission price of one cent, a person could sit and be edified all day long by scholars, merchants, travelers, community leaders, gossips, and poets.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Gossip, Long, Community

  5 Copy quote

• Who could ever tell a story complete?

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Stories

  Leah Hager Cohen (2014). “No Book but the World: A Novel”, p.91, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Increasing pressure on students to subject themselves to ever more tests, whittling themselves down to rows and rows of tight black integers upon a transcript, all ready to goose-step straight into a computer.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Black, Tests, Pressure

  Leah Hager Cohen (2003). “Heart, You Bully, You Punk”, Viking Press

  8 Copy quote

• The Dream Lover is a historical novel at once expansively researched yet intimately imagined. George Sand may be the ultimate Berg heroine. 'A life not lived in truth,' Berg writes, 'is a life forfeited.' In this latest work, Elizabeth Berg has poured her own great gifts and her own great heart into the story of a woman determined to refuse any such forfeiture, no matter the cost.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Dream, Writing, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• The humor is the sort born of ironic necessity; they use it to salve the wounds in insensitity.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Ironic, Use, Born

  4 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, being physically equipped to hear has little to do with the actual predilection to listen. Sharing a common tongue does not ensure earnest or successful communication. Missed connections occur among hearing people all the time, splitting open countless minor chasms and yawning gulches, fissures that no vaccine or technilogical advance will ever be able to mend or prevent. That task will always fail to us.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Communication, Successful, Yawning

  4 Copy quote

• Is there a wrong way to say "I don't know"? Yes. When we declare ignorance, it should be a) honest and b) in the spirit of opening ourselves up to hearing, to learning, to receiving. When we say "I don't know" under these conditions, the words can forge connection, healing, growth. But when we resist or disavow knowledge, when we profess ignorance as a way of donning armor and evading accountability, then we make a mockery of those words, and we rupture connections not only with others but within ourselves, within our souls.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Healing, Ignorance, Accountability

  4 Copy quote

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