SSC CGL Tier-2 30-November-2016 English

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.
Passage:

Implanting standards, right values, the science of good and evil are an essential part of education. Many forces thwart this to work, but two of the most serious hindrances to it are examinations and specialization. The examination system is both an opiate and a poison. It is an opiate because it lulls Man into believing that all is well when most is ill. It is a poison because it paralyses or at least slows down the natural activities of the healthy mind. Man finds himself a creature of unknown capacities in an unknown world, wants to learn what the world is like, what he should be and do in it. To help him in answering these questions is the one and only purpose of education. However, tests of progress are useful and necessary. Examinations are harmless when the examinee is indifferent to their result, but as soon as they matter, they begin to distort his attitude to education and to conceal its purpose. For disinterestedness is the essence of all good education and liberal education is impossible without it.

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.
Passage:

The man who is perpetually hesitating which of the two things he will do first, will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend, - who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows-can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in any thing, he will be at best stationary, and more probably retrograde in all. It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with flexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit that can advance to eminence in any line. Take your course wisely, but firmly; and
having taken it, hold upon it with heroic resolution, and the Alps and Pyrenees will sink before you.