Word: notion
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Chancellor Hutchins of the University of Chicago," there is "a certain lack of boldness" on the part of educators. They seem sold on the idea "that every young person has a right to a higher education, irrespective of ability or previous training." And what is the result? A notion, said Beloff, "that the total number of students is more important than the quality of the work done...
...true democracy," Eliot asserts stoutly, "can maintain itself unless it contains these different levels . . . Complete equality means universal irresponsibility . . . oppressive for the conscientious and licentious for the rest." Mass education looks fine on paper, but in practice it only means "half-education," and encourages the half-baked notion "that superiority is always superiority of intellect." In Eliot's Victorian view of things, the true superiority is the superiority of any class passing on its culture for generation after generation...
...thing all meteorologists are agreed about: in spite of a widely held popular notion, man's tinkering with atomic energy has nothing to do with the funny weather. The energy released by atom bombs is vanishingly small compared to the forces of weather. "To counteract the energy maintaining a first-class hurricane," says Harry Wexler, the bureau's chief of Special Scientific Services, "you would have to explode 20 atom bombs per second...
Ever since 1928, when his America won a Musical America, magazine contest (with Koussevitzky and Stokowski among the judges), Bloch had had a notion that its broad, sweeping main theme was the best U.S. national-anthem music around -and specifically a lot better than The Star-Spangled Banner. But in 22 years, The Star-Spangled Banner had held its own and Bloch's America had been heard only a handful of times...
...some institutions it is required, to present controversial questions in a neutral manner. However, the "on the one hand and on the other hand" approach seems to me to leave much to be desired when we come to as clear-cut a matter as probity in public life. The notion that every classroom should become a public forum is patently absurd. To the best of my knowledge, all persons enrolled in my course have done so voluntarily. That being the case, I am afraid they will have to put up with what I have to say, even if they find...