Top 100 Education Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best education quotes ever written, picked out of the full education archive on QuoteForever. You will find Amos Bronson Alcott, B. F. Skinner, Carter G. Woodson and Chanakya among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

2

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

3

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

4

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.

5

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

6

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

7

The accumulation of facts, even if interesting in themselves, should not constitute the main part of education; these facts, whether they be of classical learning or knick-knacks of history, will be of little use unless the mind has been trained to see them in proper perspective.

8

There is no education like adversity.

9

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.

10

Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.

11

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

12

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

13

I didn't write the book to sell the book, but to tell my experiences.

14

The essence of intercultural education is the acquisition of empathy-the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see, or may see it more accurately. The simple purpose of the exchange program...is to erode the culturally rooted mistrust that sets nations against one another. The exchange program is not a panacea but an avenue of hope.

15

When asked what learning was the most necessary, he said, “Not to unlearn what you have learned!”

16

To succeed, you will soon learn, as I did, the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy, both verbal and numerical, and communication skills.

17

Standardized tests are an indicator of the kind of service taxpayers are receiving - and whether schools, educators and policymakers are doing their jobs. In the United States, taxpayers spend almost $600 billion annually on public education, so it's not unreasonable to ask what all that money is producing. In fact, it's irresponsible not to know.

18

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

19

I learn by going where I have to go.

20

You see it in schools all over... the concept that 'I'll be somewhat less than my best in order to make those around me feel more comfortable' is alive and well... I'm very keen that they understand that if they make themselves a little less than they can be, it is a one-way street to mediocrity.

21

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

22

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.

23

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.

24

Your choice of armor was your intellect.

25

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

26

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

27

Every short statement about economics is misleading (with the possible exception of my present one).

28

We live in a world of increasing dependence on electronic records and retrieval, unprecedented security and preservation concerns, and insufficient attention to civic and democratic education.

29

we must go on fighting for basic education for all, but also emphasize the importance of the content of education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling does not convert education into a prison, rather than being a passport to the wide world.

30

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.

31

I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ's reign, that a comprehensive and centralised system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.

32

And, speaking generally, passion seems not to be amenable to reason, but only to force.

33

While my friends were discussing Pearl Harbor as the country's problem, I took it personally. It dawned on me that the Japanese attack could be my ticket out of high school.

34

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.

35

Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.

36

I also found that for myself, since I've had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

37

The source is knowledge. Wanna go to college, or wanna be garbage?

38

Making sure all our students get a great education, find a career that's fulfilling and rewarding, and have a chance to live out their dreams ... wouldn't just make us a more successful country - it would also make us a more fair and just one.

39

I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know.

40

The graduations hang on the wall, but they never really helped us at all.

41

Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns, housing discrimination, economic disparities and long-held custom, they most emphatically are in reality.

42

The amount of money we spend on education is important, but not nearly as important as how the money is spent.

43

Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly.

44

All around as a person, on right decisions, on holding your money, on doing your trade, a good education is a must. I don't think I would've done as good without an education.

45

Too often the educational value of doing well what is done, however little, is overlooked. One thing well done prepares the mind to do the next thing better. Not how much, but how well, should be the motto. One problem thoroughly understood is of more value than a score poorly mastered.

46

This (scanning project) is our chance to one-up the Greeks! It is really possible with the technology of today, not tomorrow. We can provide all the works of humankind to all the people of the world. It will be an achievement remembered for all time, like putting a man on the moon.

47

I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed.

48

We're gonna play some pool, skip some school, act real cool, stay out all night, it's gonna be alright.

49

School is not the end but only the beginning of an education.

50

[On U.S. universities:] The bland leading the bland.

51

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That's an education in itself.

52

The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.

53

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

54

... all education must be unsound which does not propose for itself some object; and the highest of all objects must be that of living a life in accordance with God's Will.

55

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

56

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

57

The acquirements of science maybe termed the armor of the mind.

58

The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.

59

A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me.

60

I do not see any reason why they should not be given the means to give their teachers just as high an education as is secured by attendance at the Protestant schools.

61

The fruit of liberal education is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn, not knowledge, but power.

62

One of the most powerful tools for empowering individuals and communities is making certain that any individual who wants to receive a quality education can do so.

63

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.

64

Education costs money. But then so does ignorance.

65

In old days men studied for the sake of self-improvement; nowadays men study in order to impress other people.

66

Vocational education programs have made a real difference in the lives of countless young people nationwide; they build self-confidence and leadership skills by allowing students to utilize their unique gifts and talents.

67

The language of gardening fuels the senses: talk with your hands, observe with your ears and listen with your eyes.

68

One country ... one ideology, one system is not sufficient. It is helpful to have a variety of different approaches ... We can then make a joint effort to solve the problems of the whole of humankind.

69

We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world.

70

Recent decades clearly demonstrate that the more secular our Public Schools become the less successful they become academically.

71

The calculus is the story this [the Western] world first told itself as it became the modern world.

72

The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It's not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It's not nearly as big a problem as the nation's stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.

73

Books fall open, you fall in, delighted where you've never been; hear voices not once heard before, reach world on world through door on door; find unexpected keys to things locked up beyond imaginings. What might you be, perhaps become, because one book is somewhere? Some wise delver into wisdom, wit, and wherewithal has written it. True books will venture, dare you out, whisper secrets, maybe shout across the gloom to you in need, who hanker for a book to read.

74

The impending teacher shortage is the most critical education issue we will face in the next decade.

75

I think an education is not only important, it is the most important thing you can do with your life.

76

Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

77

'No Child Left Behind' requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms.

78

Johnny can get down and Johnny can throw up, but Johnny can't read.

79

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

80

Always educate yourself.

81

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

82

You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.

83

Wise people learn when they can; fools learn when they must.

84

We have ignored cultural literacy in thinking about education We ignore the air we breathe until it is thin or foul. Cultural literacy is the oxygen of social intercourse.

85

The world no doubt is the best or most serviceable schoolmaster; but the world's curriculum does not include Latin and Greek.

86

In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

87

Education is not only a ladder of opportunity, but it is also an investment in our future.

88

Although children are only 24 percent of the population, they're 100 percent of our future and we cannot afford to provide any child with a substandard education.

89

The atmosphere [in the school lunchroom] is not quite that of a prison, because the students are permitted to talk quietly, under the frowning scrutiny of teachers standing around on duty, during their meal-they are not supposed to talk while standing in line, though this rule is only sporadically enforced.

90

It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is to be educated.

91

If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of education, namely, the taxation out of which education is provided.

92

The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist.

93

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.

94

The best and most important part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.

95

There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas - developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e^(i pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician.

96

This instrument [radio] can teach. It can illuminate, yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box.

97

Sometimes I fear that, if Harvard does not give up trying to turn itself from an Institution of Learning into an Educational Institution, we may have a generation of professors whose duty it will be to disseminate information which they have not the time to acquire.

98

No education deserves the name unless it develops thought, unless it pierces down to the mysterious spiritual principle of mind, and starts that into activity and growth.

99

The assumption of all education is that learning will be directed toward constructive ends and I'm convinced that colleges should support students in their determination to be useful, self-sufficient, and productive.

100

To put it simply, school readiness means creating in this country a public love of children.

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