The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Interpretation
Education transforms ignorance into understanding and openness.
This quote emphasizes that the fundamental aim of education is not merely to fill a student with knowledge, but to foster a mindset that is curious, adaptable, and open to new ideas. It suggests that true education enriches the mind, encouraging critical thinking and exploration rather than rote memorization.
In practice
In a graduation speech to motivate students about lifelong learning.
Over the years, I've evolved a somewhat heretical but time-and mind-saving approach to books, articles, editorials that deal with weighty matters. More often than not, by beginning at the end and contemplating the conclusions, one can determine if it's worth going through the whole to get there.
Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.
To live long and achieve happiness, cultivate the art of radiating happiness.
If you never budge, don't expect a push.
It's never a good deal when only one party thinks it is.
How would you know what happy is if you've never been otherwise.
Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.
Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be.
I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Only whites were allowed by law and practice to attend the University of Mississippi - a public institution supported by public dollars. Anything public and supported by public dollars is for me.
If present trends continue, our country may soon find itself far behind many other nations in both science and technology nations where, if you inform strangers that you are a mathematician, they respond with admiration and not by telling you how much they hated math in school, and how they sure could use you to balance their checkbooks.
Some advice: keep the flame of curiosity and wonderment alive, even when studying for boring exams. That is the well from which we scientists draw our nourishment and energy. And also, learn the math. Math is the language of nature, so we have to learn this language.
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