Education Quote by Edna St. Vincent Millay

A surprising amount of contempt hides inside this supposedly practical bit of business wisdom: customers, Millay suggests, are conservative shoppers in a hurry, reaching for the familiar and bargaining it down. “Last year’s model, cheaper” isn’t just a market observation; it’s a jab at how desire often disguises itself as thrift and how preference masquerades as principle. The line works because it punctures the flattering myth that consumers are reliable narrators of their own wants.

Then the quote pivots from cynicism to a kind of paternal ambition. “Needs” belong to the producer, the designer, the writer of the future. Millay’s verb choice matters: you don’t ask, you “understand,” then you “build,” then you “educate.” That is a power sequence. The subtext is that innovation isn’t democratic; it’s interpretive. The maker has to read the customer’s life as a text, as well as the customer does, and then revise it.

The context matters, too. Millay, as an author, knew that audiences frequently request more of what already worked, packaged with a discount: the sequel, the safe rhyme, the familiar persona. Art, like product design, advances when someone risks giving the public what it didn’t yet have language to request. Still, the final clause carries the most combustible implication: “educate him to the fact” blurs into persuasion, even manipulation. It’s the manifesto of every visionary - and every slick marketer - arguing that the future must be sold before it can be wanted.