When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005) Austrian-born Management Consultant
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
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 devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.
—John Dewey (1859–1952) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Educator
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
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, ‘press on’ has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American Head of State, Lawyer
The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
There’s a new tribunal now higher than God’s—The educated man s!
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.
—Chinese Proverb
The concentration and dedication- the intangibles are the deciding factors between who won and who lost.
—Tom Seaver (1944–2020) American Baseball Player
Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
The education of the present race of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness.—For my own part, I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character.—That which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife.
—Hannah More
Education consists of example and love—nothing else.
—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss Educator
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
A college is a place where pebbles are polished and diamonds dimmed.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–99) American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
—Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German Man of Letters, Critic
Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Towery city and branching between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) British Jesuit Priest, 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
There is no teaching until the public is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
If I ran a school, I’d give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I’d give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.
—Horace Mann (1796–1859) American Educator, Politician, Educationalist
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams (1838–1918) American Historian, Man of Letters