Selected education quotes

1. Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

2. The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems. Fighting is useless. Suicide.

3. Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

4. I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

5. I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

6. Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose.

7. I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated.

8. In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

9. Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.

10. It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.

11. Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

12. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

13. We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.

14. The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

15. Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.

16. Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

17. Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.

18. A Socrates in every classroom.

19. I approach cooking from a science angle because I need to understand how things work. If I understand the egg, I can scramble it better. It's a simple as that.

20. I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

21. I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.

22. Taking a year off and going to school was the best thing I could have done after The Princess Diaries. It taught me that I don't need Hollywood or a job to make me happy.

23. There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

24. Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

25. Education is the best provision for old age.

26. Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

27. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

28. The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

29. The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

30. The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

31. When the students are occupied, they're not juvenile delinquents. I believe that education is a capital investment.

32. Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

33. When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding.

34. By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

35. It's easier to learn many other things, if you first learn how to learn.

36. If only our great thinkers could learn to talk, and our great talkers could learn to think.

37. The truly successful teacher is the one you will never need again.

38. I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.

39. Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.

40. From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

41. Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be retaught when the students become teachers.

42. I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, 'This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me.'

43. I should be sorry if I only entertained them, I wish to make them better.

44. Rarely is the question asked, ...is our children learning?

45. Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

46. I said I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.

47. The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood.

48. There are two ways of dealing with nonsense in this world. One way is to put nonsense in the right place; as when people put nonsense into nursery rhymes. The other is to put nonsense in the wrong place; as when they put it into educational addresses, psychological criticisms, and complaints against nursery rhymes or other normal amusements of mankind.

49. Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

50. Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.

51. Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization.'

52. 'Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory.'

53. The little boy went first day of school He got some crayons and started to draw He put colors all over the paper For colors was what he saw And the teacher said.. 'What you doin' young man?' 'I'm paintin' flowers' he said She said... 'It's not the time for art young man And anyway flowers are green and red There's a time for everything young man And a way it should be done You've got to show concern for everyone else For you're not the only one.'

54. It is only after years of preparation that the young [artist] should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

55. 'The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.'

56. We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.

57. How full and rich a world Theirs to inhabit is- Sweet scent of grass and bloom, Playmates' glad symphony, Cool touch of western wind, Sunshine's divine caress. How should they know or feel They are in darkness? But, oh, the miracle! If a Redeemer came, Laid finger on their eyes- One touch and what a world, New-born in loveliness!

58. Being away from home gave me the chance to look at myself with a jaundiced eye. I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge, something I had always tried to hide, and I came home glad to start in here again with a love for Europe that I am afraid will never leave me.

59. There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all.

60. When Harvard men say they have graduated from Radcliffe, then we've made it.

61. Criticism will need an injection of humility - that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system.

62. A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them. The possession of knowledge makes for unjust power over others only if used for that very purpose: a physician or lawyer or clergyman can exploit or humiliate others, or he can be a humanitarian and a benefactor. In any case, it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an 'elite' scheming to oppress the rest of us.

63. I had been educated with free scholarships. I went to nine different universities, always at public expense, and when you have that experience, you are almost obligated to give it back. It's as simple as that.

64. During the earliest stages, the child perceives things like a solipsist who is unaware of himself as subject and is familiar only with his own actions.

65. The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

66. Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

67. I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.

68. Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

69. I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

70. Well, I've worried some about, you know, why write books ... why are we teaching people to write books when presidents and senators do not read them, and generals do not read them. And it's been the university experience that taught me that there is a very good reason, that you catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and you poison their minds with ... humanity, and however you want to poison their minds, it's presumably to encourage them to make a better world.

71. Roses are red And ready for plucking You're sixteen And ready for high school.

72. When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect - but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate - may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical - always think for yourself.

73. Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.

74. The ability to learn is older- as it is also more widespread- than is the ability to teach.

75. People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.

76. : if I hadn't gone to a private Christian school, I'd never have built up enough animosity to want to have started a band. And now that I have one, the fact that they are giving me such resistance and publicity, they have made me far bigger than they'd ever have wanted me to have become. So I guess in a strange way the Christians have influenced me the most.

77. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

78. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

79. Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called 'making love'. Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said 'sex is good.' All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.

80. The power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty. Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly.

81. There is no better motto which it [culture] can have than these words of Bishop Wilson, 'To make reason and the will of God prevail.'

82. 'My goal has not ever been to change minds; my goal is to open minds.'

83. 'My four years at Berkley represent two of the happiest weeks of my life.'

84. With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.

85. Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

86. I say get an education. Become an electrician, a mechanic, a doctor, a lawyer - anything but a fighter. In this trade, it's the managers that make the money and last the longest.

87. Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it.

88. My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don't have the guts to sometimes say: I don't know....

89. If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, 'You're an asshole,' which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, 'That's idiotic,' when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.

90. Most problems of teaching are not problems of growth but helping cultivate growth. As far as I know, and this is only from personal experience in teaching, I think about ninety percent of the problem in teaching, or maybe ninety-eight percent, is just to help the students get interested. Or what it usually amounts to is to not prevent them from being interested. Typically they come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds. But if children['s] [...] normal interest is maintained or even aroused, they can do all kinds of things in ways we don't understand.

91. Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

92. Education can no longer be the sole property of the state.

93. When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

94. Ignorance is not bliss -- it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.

95. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

96. Children are living beings- more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.

97. Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them.

98. If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set police at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

99. Children are all foreigners.

100. Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines in on us at unawares, but the path of science and of letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and unschooled farmer's boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.