Every person who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make life full, significant, and interesting.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Satirist, Short Story Writer
Public school is a place of detention for children placed in the care of teachers who are afraid of the principal, principals who are afraid of the school board, school boards who are afraid of the parents, parents who are afraid of the children, and children who are afraid of nobody.
—Unknown
How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite.
—Edward Everett (1794–1865) American Politician, Scholar
He has seen but little of life who does not discern everywhere the effect of early education on men’s opinions and habits of thinking. Children bring out of the nursery that which displays itself throughout their lives.
—Richard Cecil
Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
—John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American Activist
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that “the soldier was abroad.” That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.
—Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) Scottish Jurist, Politician
Education is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.
—John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American Activist
He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
If nobody dropped out of eighth grade, who would hire the college graduates?
—Unknown
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than even their parents, for these only give them life, those the art of living well.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
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
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
I like to instruct people. It is noble to teach oneself. It is still nobler to teach others, and less trouble.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
It is only the ignorant who despise education.
—Publilius Syrus (fl.85–43 BCE) Syrian-born Roman Latin Writer
It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education is a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
I read Shakespeare and the Bible and I can shoot dice. That’s what I call a liberal education.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actress
Every day’s experience shows how much more actively education goes on out of the schoolroom, than in it.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
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
Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer—into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.
—Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor (1879–1964) British Politician, Socialite
I add this, that rational ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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