Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
He is wise who knows the sources of knowledge — who knows who has written and where it is to be found.
—Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–86) American Presbyterian Theologian
Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue-questions and answer that pursue every problem to the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader
Education is the transmission of civilization.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
Neither piety, virtue, nor liberty can long flourish in a community where the education of youth is neglected.
—Peter Cooper
The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue’s sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.
—George William Curtis (1824–92) American Essayist, Public Speaker, Editor, Author
America’s founding fathers did not intend to take religion out of education. Many of the nation’s greatest universities were founded by evangelists and religious leaders; but many of these have lost the founders concept and become secular institutions. Because of this attitude, secular education is stumbling and floundering.
—Billy Graham (1918–91) American Baptist Religious Leader
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Knowledge is power. Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge — broad, deep knowledge — is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man’s progress is to feel the great heartthrobs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.
—Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Essayist
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
Education is the only cure for certain diseases the modern world has engendered, but if you don’t find the disease, the remedy is superfluous.
—John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875–1940) Scottish Novelist, Politician, Diplomat
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
I am willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never sense the sweet stench of corruption that is all around them — the keen, thin scent of decay that pervades everything and accuses with a terrible accusation the superficial youthfulness, the abounding undergraduate noise, that fills those ancient buildings.
—Thomas Merton (1915–68) American Trappist Monk
‘Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.
—William Congreve (1670–1729) English Playwright, Poet
Liberal education develops a sense of right, duty and honor; and more and more in the modern world, large business rests on rectitude and honor as well as on good judgment.
—Charles William Eliot (1834–1926) American Educator, Academic
The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canada Journalist, Playwright, Academic, Critic, Novelist
Within the university… you can study without waiting for any efficient or immediate result. You may search, just for the sake of searching, and try for the sake of trying. So there is a possibility of what I would call playing. It’s perhaps the only place within society where play is possible to such an extent.
—Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
The education of a man is never complete until he dies.
—Robert E. Lee (1807–70) Confederate General during American Civil War
If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind?
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian Physician, Educator
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
Public instruction should be the first object of government.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
The youth of Italy shall be trained so that in this country there shall be a place for every person and every person shall be in that place. I am here today and gone tomorrow; but let no one think fascism goes with me.
—Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Italian Head of State, Politician
It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
—B. F. Skinner (1904–90) American Psychologist, Social Philosopher, Inventor, Author
What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Education is a debt due from the present to the future generations.
—George Peabody (1795–1869) American Financier, Banker, Entrepreneur
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
A college education shows a man how little other people know.
—Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian Author, Humorist, Businessperson, Judge
It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) English Biologist
The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (1866–1936) American Educator
Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think — rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.
—James Beattie
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator, Writer
A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.
—John Lubbock (1834–1913) English Politician, Biologist
Education consists of example and love–nothing else.
—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss Educator
The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap.
—Ray Kroc (1902–84) American Entrepreneur, Businessperson
There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
—James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American Historian, Writer
As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation.
—Xenophon (c.430–c.354 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
—John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
Education at school continues what has been done at home: it crystallizes the optical illusion, consolidates it with book learning, theoretically legitimizes the traditional trash and trains the children to know without understanding and to accept denominations for definitions. Astray in his conceptions, entangled in words, man loses the flair for truth, the taste for nature. What a powerful intellect must you possess, to be suspicious of this moral carbon dioxide and with your head swimming already, to hurl yourself out of it into the fresh air, with which, into the bargain, everyone round is trying to scare you!
—Alexander Herzen (1812–70) Russian Revolutionary, Writer
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
You’ll likely learn more of enduring value from an hour of wise googling than from any course.
—Marty Nemko (b.1950) American Career Coach
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
The test and the use of man’s education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
—Jacques Barzun (b.1907) French-born American Historian, Philosophers
We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they’ve got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.
—Timothy Leary (1920–96) American Psychologist, Author
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
—J. D. Salinger (1919–2010) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
—Marie Curie (1867–1934) Polish-born French Physicist, Chemist
Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion.
—Muriel Spark (1918–2006) Scottish Novelist, Short-story Writer, Poet
The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.
—Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French Poet, Novelist, Critic
There is no education like adversity.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State
People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
—Unknown
With just enough of learning to misquote.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
The system — the American one, at least — is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
—William C. Durant (1861–1947) American Industrialist
Much learning does not teach understanding.
—Heraclitus (535BCE–475BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Invest in yourself, in your education. There’s nothing better.
—Sylvia Porter (1913–91) American Economist, Journalist
The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity.
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian Physician, Educator
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
‘Tis education forms the common mind: just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself to do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a person’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson a person learn thoroughly.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) English Biologist
Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818) American First Lady
All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) American-British Essayist, Bibliophile
Education is a wonderful thing. If you couldn’t sign your name you’d have to pay cash.
—Rita Mae Brown (b.1944) American Writer, Feminist
America’s future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what it is taught, hence we must watch what we teach it, how we live before it.
—Jane Addams (1860–1935) American Social Activist, Political Activist, Author, Lecturer
Federal aid promotes the idea that federal school money is ‘free’ money, and thus gives the people a distorted picture of the cost of education. I was distressed to find that five out of six high school and junior college students recently interviewed in Phoenix said they favored federal aid because it would mean more money for local schools and ease the financial burden on Arizona taxpayers. The truth, of course, is that the federal government has no funds except those it extracts from the taxpayers who resided in the various States. The money that the federal government pays to State X for education has been taken from the citizens of State X in federal taxes and comes back to them, minus the Washington brokerage fee.
—Barry Goldwater (1909–98) American Elected Representative, Businessperson, Politician
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Our attitude towards ourselves should be “to be satiable in learning” and towards others “to be tireless in teaching.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chinese Statesman
That’s the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
‘Tis the set of the sail that decides the goal, and not the storm of life.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American Poet, Journalist
I was asked to memorize what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) English Occultist, Mystic, Magician
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
—Unknown
The greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work.
—Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American Singer-Songwriter
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined; the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Education is not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It is an initiation into life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.
—Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900–90) Indian Politician, Diplomat
Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
—Zhuang Zhou (c.369–c.286 BCE) Chinese Taoist Philosopher
The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
—Wendell Phillips (1811–84) American Abolitionist, Lawyer, Orator
When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it. The fault lies with your moldy systems, your logic of 2 + 2 = 4. The fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, magistrates, doctors, who know nothing of the true mysteries of the body or the cosmic laws of existence. False scholars blind outside this world, philosophers who pretend to reconstruct the mind. The least act of spontaneous creation is a more complex and revealing world than any metaphysics.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) American Educator
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge : it is more dangerous than ignorance.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Our schools should get five years to get back to where they were in 1963. If they’re still bad maybe we should declare educational bankruptcy, give the people their money and let them educate themselves and start their own schools.
—William Bennett (b.1943) American Politician, Political Theorist, Government Official
A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.
—Smiley Blanton
I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
The whole object of education is, or should be, to develop mind. The mind should be a thing that works. It should be able to pass judgment on events as they arise, make decisions.
—Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
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
The problem of education is two fold: first to know, and then to utter. Everyone who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
There is no virtue in being uncritical; nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics.
—Richard Livingstone (1880–1960) British Scholar, Educator, Academic
States should spend money and effort on this great all-underlying matter of spiritual education as they have hitherto spent them on beating and destroying each other.
—John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English Novelist, Playwright
Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the second best.
—William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American Author, Critic, Scholar
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803) Italian Dramatist
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
—Jacques Barzun (b.1907) French-born American Historian, Philosophers
A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
Never regard study as a duty but as an enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later works belong.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
There can be but a single goal of education, and that — education to courage.
—Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Austrian Psychiatrist
Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken in the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character. — Let parents always bear this in mind.
—Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Theologian
Boys and girls should be taught to think first of others in material things; they should be infected with the wisdom to know that in making smooth the way of all lies the road to their own health and happiness.
—John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English Novelist, Playwright
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
—Nelson Algren (1909–81) American Novelist, Short Story Writer