Quotes on Education

"Education" is derived from the Latin word, "educarri," which means "to draw out."

Achard, Marcel	When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.
Adams, Henry Brooks	A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Addison, James	"Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad an introduction. In solitude, a solace, and in society, an ornament. It hastens vice, it guides virtue; it gives, at once, grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage."
Alcott, Amos Bronson	The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.
Anonymous	Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.
Aristotle	"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
Aristotle	"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead."
Bacon, Francis	Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.
Berlioz, Hector Louis	Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Bhagavad Gita 4:34	“Understand that by humble submission, by asking the proper questions, and through service, you will be taught this knowledge by those who are wise, by those who have the vision of truth.”
Bloom, Allan	There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.
Bok, Derek	"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
Bourne, Alec	It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. -From A Doctor's Creed
Boyer, Ernest	A poor surgeon hurts one person at a time. A poor teacher hurts 30.
Brodie, Fawn M.	Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.
Bronowski, J.	It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. -From The Ascent of Man
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward	The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
Camus, Albert	Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
Carruthers, Thomas	A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
Carruthers, Thomas	A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
Chesterton, G. K.	Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Chhandogya Upanishad 7:1:3	When the Divine Rishi Narada approaches the sage Sanatkumara seeking instruction, the sage asks him what he already knows. This is the standard question a Teacher asks of a prospective disciple: discerning the disciple's present state of knowledge and understanding is an essential prerequisite for an adequate program of learning. Narada answers, listing the (encyclopedic) range of texts and topics he has studied. He then adds a crucial qualification: "But, Lord, with all this, I know only words: I do not know the Self. From men like you I have heard that the one who knows the Self overcomes sorrows. I am one afflicted with sorrows..."
Chinese Proverb	Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
Ciardi, John	A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
Cicero	The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
Clark, Kenneth B.	Children who are treated as if they are uneducable almost invariably become uneducable.
Colorose, Barbara	If kids come to us [educators/teachers] from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.
Cousins, Norman	We are turning out young men and women who are superbly trained but poorly educated. They are a how-to generation, less concerned with the nature of things than with the working of things. They are beautifully skilled but intellectually underdeveloped. They know everything that is to be known about the functional requirements of their trade but very little about the human situation that serves as the context for their work. -From Saturday Review, May-June 1983
Davies, Robertson	The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
Diogenes	"The foundation of every state is the education of its youth."
Disraeli, Benjamin	Upon the education of the people of this country, the fate of this country depends.
Disraeli, Benjamin	Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.
Dobie, Frank J.	The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another. -From A Texan in England. 1945
Douglas, Norman	Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes.
Dumas, Alexandre	How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Edwards, Tryon	If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
Einstein, Albert	I do not much believe in education. Each man ought to be his own model, however frightful that may be.
Einstein, Albert	It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Einstein, Albert	The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Einstein, Albert	The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
Epictetus	Non schola sed vita decimos! "Only the educated are free."
Estrada, Ignacio	If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
Everett, Edward	"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army."
France, Anatole	The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Benjamin Franklin	"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."
Frost, Robert	You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
Galileo	You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.
Gandhi, Mahatma	If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
Gandhi, Mahatma	Those who know how to think need no teachers.
Gilt, Eric	We must learn to get on in the world-not in the commercial and materialistic sense, but as a means of getting heavenward. Any education which neglects this fact, and to the extent to which it neglects it, is false education, because it is false to man.
Givot, George	Those who go to college and never get out are called professors.
Godwin, Gail	Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
Green, Russell	The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving.
Hubbard, Elbert	This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
Hubbard, Elbert	The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.
Hubbard, Elbert	Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.
Hubbard, Elbert	The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.
Hutchins, Robert Maynard	A liberal education ... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family, and even his nation.
Hutchins, Robert Maynard	"A liberal education... frees a person from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family, and even his nation." -From The Political Animal
Huxley, Aldous	Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
Ingersoll, Robert G.	Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
Jacques Barzun	Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Jefferson, Thomas	If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Jefferson, Thomas	"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
John Paul I, Pope	If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
Joubert, Joseph	To teach is to learn twice.
Jung, Carl Gustav	An understanding heart is everything is a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Jung, Carl Gustav	One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary new material, but the warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Kissinger, Henry	University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Iaccoca, Lee	In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.
Le Saux, Father Henry a.k.a. Swami Abhishiktananada	Some people, the intellectuals, ask India for ideas. Ever since Plato, and especially since Aristotle, the Mediterranean world has lived under the domination of the eidos, that is, of thought and concepts. It only knows things by means of the concepts which it has fashioned them. (...) In India, there is no knowledge apart from saving knowledge. But this salvation through knowledge is not a form of gnosis; it is the bringing back of the soul through ascetic practice in its own real depth.
Madison, James	"Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty."
Mizner, Wilson	I respect faith but doubt is what gets you an education.
Neal, Patricia with DeNeut, Richard	A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.
O'Connor, Flannery	Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Ortega y Gasset, José	So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don't find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a plane in it at the same time.
Perelman, Bob	Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.
Peter, Henry Lord Brougham	"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." -From "The Present State of the Law"
Pratt, Richard	A university professor set an examination question in which he asked what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The professor had to give an A+ to a student who answered: I don't know and I don't car. -From Pacific Computer Weekly, 20 July 1990.
Proverb	In teaching others we teach ourselves.
Ramana Maharshi	Is it not ignorance to know all else without knowing the Self which is the source of all knowledge? Can it be knowledge? "Reality in Forty Verses" verse 11, lines 1 and 2.
Ramana Maharshi	What else is there to know for anyone when Self itself is known? -From "Self Knowledge" verse 3, line 2.
Rogers, John	Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life.
Rohlen, Thomas P.	Japan is a country committed to learning. The United States isn't and it shows.
Roosevelt, Eleanor	A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.
Russell, Bertrand	It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
Sanskrit shloka	The brahmachari (student) gets one quarter of his knowledge from the acharya (teacher), one quarter from his own intelligence, a third quarter from interaction with other students and the fourth quarter in course of time.
Santayana, George	A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
Schweitzer, Albert	The most important thing in education is to make young people think for themselves.
Shaffer, Robert H.	We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit.
Shaw, George Bernard	A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
Shaw, George Bernard	What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Shvetashvatara Upanishad	In sesame see there is oil In milk there is ghee In wood there is fire In Mother Earth there is water ...but to extract oil from sesame seed, etc., you need to exert some effort.
Skinner, B.F.	Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
Smith and Jones	The philosophy exam was a piece of cake -which was a bit of a surprise, actually, because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper.
Snow, Dan	When teaching, light a fire, don't fill a bucket.
Socrates	I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
Steinbeck, John	It is customary for adults to forget how hard and dull school is. The learning by memory all the basic things one must know is the most incredible and unending effort. Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that watch an illiterate adult try to do it. School is not so easy and it is not for the most part very fun, but then, if you are very lucky, you may find a teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of luck. I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three had these things in common. They all loved what they were doing. They did not tell - the catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and precious. -From "On Teaching"
Steinbeck, John	I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit…
Talbert, Bob	Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.
Tenzin Gyatson, the 14th Dalai Lama.	Such human qualities as morality, compassion, decency, wisdom and so forth... must be cultivated and sustained through systematic moral education so that a more humane world may emerge. ...We need a revolution in our commitment to and practice of universal humanitarian values. -From A Human Approach to World Peace
Tenzin Gyatson, the 14th Dalai Lama.	In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.
Torrey, William Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889	Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. [...] The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.
Trevelyan, G. M.	Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
Twain, Mark	Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
Twain, Mark	I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Unknown	If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. -From A Nation At Risk, the 1983 report on the state of the nation’s education
Unknown	If you promise not to believe everything your child says happens at this school, I'll promise not to believe everything he says happens at home. Note to students' parents from an English schoolmaster.
Unknown, American critic	Education: that mysterious process whereby information passed on from the lecture notes of the professor onto the notebook of the student through his pen without entering the mind of either.
Unknown, English poet	Vain is your science, vain your art, your triumphs and glories, vain to feed the hunger of the heart and the famine of the brain.
Ustinov, Peter	Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well.
Vivekananda, Swami	Education is not the amount of information that is put in your brain and runs riot there undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making and assimilation of ideas. If education is identical with libraries are the greatest sages in the world and encyclopedias are rishis (sages).
Vivekananda, Swami	We must have a hold on the spiritual and secular education of the nation. Do you understand that?... The education that you are getting now has some good points, but it has a tremendous disadvantage which is so great that the good things are all weighed down. In the first place it is not a man-making education. it is merely and entirely a negative education. A negative education or any training that is based on negation, is worse than death.
Vivekananda, Swami	Education, education, education alone! Traveling through many cities of Europe and observing in them the comforts and education of even the poor people, there was brought to my mind the state of our own poor people, and I used to shed tears. What made the difference? Education was the answer I got. Through education comes faith in one's self, and through faith in one's own self the inherent Brahman is waking up in them, while the Brahman in us is gradually becoming dormant.
Vivekananda, Swami	Life is a series of fights and disillusionments... The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience. But, alas, we are called off the moment we begin really to learn.
Vivekananda, Swami	The ideal of all education should be man-making. But instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use is polishing the outside when there is no inside? The end of all training is to make the man grow. Compare the great teachers of religion with the great philosophers. The philosophers scarcely influenced anybody's inner man, and yet they wrote marvelous books. The religion teachers, on the other hand, moved countries in their lifetimes. The difference was made by personality. In the philosopher it is the faint personality that influences. In the great prophets, it is tremendous. In the former we touch intellect, in the latter we touch life. -From "Realization and its methods."
Ward, William Arthur	The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
Watson, John University of Canterbury	If your professor wrote it, it's as near to the truth as you ever need to get.
Wells, H. G.	Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
Whitman, Walt	O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renewed; Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here--that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. -From "O Me! O Life!" Leaves of Grass
Wolf, Virginia