Quotes on Education

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers.

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil's means; great teachers foresee a pupil's ends.

Children need models rather than critics.

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

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.

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.