This is why everyone should read a little Plato at least once in their life. I fell in love with this passage when I read it. Tell me this doesn't relate to our world today...
"The power to learn is in each soul, and the instrument with which it learns is like an eye turning from darkness to light. Education takes for granted that sight is there, but that it isn't turned the right way, or looking where it ought to look. And while virtues aren't there before hand but are learned in life, reason seems to belong to something more divine which never loses its power. But it is either useful and beneficial, or useless and harmful, depending on the way the minds eye is turned. Or have you never noticed this about people who are said to be vicious but clever, how keen the vision of their little souls is and how sharply it distinguishes the things it is turned towards? This shows that sight isn't inferior but rather forced to serve evil ends, showing that the sharper it sees, the more evil it accomplishes. However, when freed from the bounds of feasting, greed, and other such pleasures, like leaden weights pulling its vision down - it, being rid of these, turns to look at true things, then I say that the same soul of the same person would see these more sharply, just as it does now see evil." (518e, 519b)
Well it makes sense to me anyway...
The Republic
Plato
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