Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Education

If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though such too it includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to an great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them.
John Henry Newman (1801–90) British Theologian, Poet

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist

Minerva House was “a finishing establishment for young ladies,” where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.
Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) Scottish Jurist, Politician

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator

I have found it; I have discovered the cause of all the misfortunes which befell him. A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamities which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.
Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist

There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State

What you don’t know can hurt you.
Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher

But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation. A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity so as to be free to create within and around ourselves. To be educated to freedom must be evidenced in action…
Hillary Rodham Clinton (b.1947) American Head of State, Politician

Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the second best.
William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American Literary Scholar, Academic

Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.
Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Essayist

College-bred is a four-year loaf, using dad’s dough, Coming out half-baked, with a lot of crust.
Unknown

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist

With just enough of learning to misquote.
Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet

It is the greatest good for an individual to discuss virtue (aka Kindness, Virtue, Goodness) every day…for the unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

The school system, custodian of print culture, has no place for the rugged individual. It is, indeed, the homogenizing hopper into which we toss our integral tots for processing.
Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator

Education does not commence with the alphabet; it begins with a mother’s look, with a father’s nod of approbation, or a sign of reproof; with a sister’s gentle pressure of the hand, or a brother’s noble act of forbearance; with handfuls of flowers in green dells, on hills, and daisy meadows; with birds’ nests admired, but not touched; with creeping ants, and almost imperceptible emmets; with hummingbees and glass beehives; with pleasant walks in shady lanes, and with thoughts directed in sweet and kindly tones and words to nature, to beauty, to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue, and to the source of all good—to God Himself!
Anonymous

Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them.
Unknown

It is by education I learn to do by choice, what other men do by the constraint of fear.
Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist

The poorest education that teaches self-control, is better than the best that neglects it.
Anonymous

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner (1904–90) American Psychologist, Social Philosopher, Inventor, Author

Let us describe the education of our men. What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.
Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator

There are five tests of the evidence of education—correctness and precision in the use of the mother tongue; refined and gentle manners, the result of fixed habits of thought and action; sound standards of appreciation of beauty and of worth, and a character based on those standards; power and habit of reflection; efficiency or the power to do.
Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American Philosopher, Diplomat, Educator

Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady only, but to be a man, a woman.
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English Polymath, Philosopher, Sociologist, Political Theorist

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) American Educator

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