A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.
—Malcolm X (1925–65) American Civil Rights Leader
The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) American Educator
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
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
Education can no longer be the sole property of the state.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005) Austrian-born Management Consultant
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The world is run by C students.
—Unknown
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
—Edward Everett (1794–1865) American Politician, Scholar
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
—Unknown
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
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 quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
I often think how much easier the world would have been to manage if Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini had been at Oxford.
—E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British Politician, Political leader
In the degree in which I have been privileged to know the intimate secrets of hearts, I ever more realize how great a part is played in the lives of men and women by some little concealed germ of abnormality. For the most part they are occupied in the task of stifling and crushing those germs, treating them like weeds in their gardens. There is another and better way, even though more difficult and more perilous. Instead of trying to suppress the weeds that can never be killed, they may be cultivated into useful or beautiful flowers. For it is impossible to conceive any impulse in a human heart which cannot be transformed into Truth or into Beauty or into Love.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
It’s the less-bright students who make teachers teach better.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
—James Madison (1751–1836) American Founding Father, Statesman, President
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
If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself … you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people’s education, must serve that end exclusively.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
—Zhuang Zhou (c.369–c.286 BCE) Chinese Taoist Philosopher
The greatest education in the world is watching the masters at work.
—Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American Singer-Songwriter
School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005) Austrian-born Management Consultant
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
—Gail Godwin (b.1937) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
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
When we listen to the radio, look at television and read the newspapers we wonder whether universal education has been the great boon that its supporters have always claimed it would be.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) American Educator
One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.
—Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Essayist
It makes little difference what the trade, business, or branch of learning, in mechanical labor, or intellectual effort, the educated man is always superior to the common laborer. One who is in the habit of applying his powers in the right way will carry system into any occupation, and it will help him as much to handle a rope as to write a poem.
—Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Italian-born American Novelist, Writer
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
It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during the school term.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The concentration and dedication- the intangibles are the deciding factors between who won and who lost.
—Tom Seaver (1944–2020) American Baseball Player
To become an earner, be a learner.
—B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher
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
They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
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
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century—for several centuries. The three or four year’ course of lectures, the bachelor who know some, the master who knows most, the doctor who knows all, are ideas that have come down unimpaired from the Middle Ages. Nowadays no one should end his learning while he lives and these university degrees are preposterous. It is true that we have multiplied universities greatly in the past hundred years, but we seem to have multiplied them altogether too much upon the old pattern.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
You send your child to the schoolmaster, but ’tis the schoolboys who educate him.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for study is the last pursuit of the society; the Master eats, drinks, and sleeps, the Fellows drink, dispute and pun, the employments of the undergraduates you will probably conjecture without my description.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
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
A good example is the best sermon.
—Anonymous
Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life.
—Brigham Young (1801–77) American Mormon Leader