I have a hazy memory of something from a philosophy class (or maybe I dreamed it). I'm hoping someone here will recognize it and remind me who it is.

The student goes through three stages:
1. defeat/overcome your parents - meaning, let go of your baggage
2. defeat/overcome yourself - meaning, do more than you thought you could
3. defeat/overcome your teacher - meaning, grow to the point that you can educate yourself.

L. Ron Hubbard?

__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

wow, I hope not.

Definitely Hubbard. He's my idol. He's also known for "e=mc^2" & "cogito ergo sum." If you don't believe me, then you need to talk to Hubbard. He'll tell you everything you need to know. He'll also tell you everything you don't need to know, unless he's already told you everything you do need to know, in which case you'll know that you already know what's needed and not needed to be known.

__________________
The following sentence is true. The previous sentence is true. Mind boggling, isn't it!

I avoided that most tasking of tasks simply by learning the vastly smaller sum of universal knowledge that wasn't Hubbard.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Robert Heinlein? All the defeat/overcome stuff would fit. Last man standing and all that.

__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

That fits his philosophy, though I think Heinlein would have added a fourth:

4. defeat/overcome society - develop a way to get rich teaching others how to bring themselves through stages 1, 2, and 3.

__________________
If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Love and rspect your Parents and cherish your teachers. You will learn much from them as they are the ones who will share the secrets of their successes as well as their faults. Only your great friends will share that gift.
Find the pearls in the sand. They shall serve you well.
Best regards,
Dan

Hubbard did.

__________________
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Actually I think he was more of the "get rich getting others to think (narcisisticly pretend) they are bringing themselves through stages 1, 2, and 3.

The exact quote "the way to get rich in America is to invent a new religion"

I found a website with the quote I was looking for:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=16390

That was buddha? It sounds like the mantra of the hoax-believers.

The OP reminds me of Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau