The education of youth, an employment of more consequence than making laws and preaching the gospel, because it lays the foundation on which both law and gospel rest for success.
Noah WebsterRead
The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Youth education requires careful oversight to set a solid foundation for future success.
Noah Webster emphasizes the critical importance of monitoring and improving the education of young people. He argues that establishing a strong educational system is far more effective than trying to fix the negative consequences of a poor system later. The quality of education lays the groundwork for the success of both legal and moral frameworks in society.
Themes
EducationYouthSystemSuccessFoundation
In practice
Example use cases
During a school board meeting to discuss curriculum improvements, this quote may highlight the importance of proactive education reforms.
More from Noah Webster
All quotes →It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.
Noah WebsterRead
The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.
Noah WebsterRead
In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate-look to his character.
Noah WebsterRead
Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground
Noah WebsterRead
Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes.
Noah WebsterRead
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