Quotes on Education

The best way to teach morality is to make it a habit with children.

The proper man understands equity, the small man profits.

They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.

Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless.

The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea.

One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests.

School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you.

I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

The successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles.

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think.