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| Quotations about education | |
I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike - and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two - are always dominated by tools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be Liked.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
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Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise -- even in their own field.
The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.
Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don't have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen - or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own 
I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education.
You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book. - Groucho Marx
No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.
It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience. I think many people have that enthusiasm, but they are prevented from being teachers because they didn't go through the teacher mill. Now you have teachers who have been through the teacher mill, yet they have no capacity to inspire anyone at all. It's the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That's what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.
I add this also, that natural ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters...I most sincerely wish...that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.
It is certain that a serious attention to the sciences and liberal arts softens and humanizes the temper, and cherishes those fine emotions in which true virtue and honor consist. It rarely, very rarely happens that a man of taste and learning is not, at least, an honest man, whatever frailties may attend him.
Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone: learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.
The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done -- people who are creative, inventive discoverers. 
The first thing obvious to children is what is sensible; and that we make no part of their rudiments. We press their memory too soon, and puzzle, strain, and load them with words and rules; to know grammar and rhetoric, and a strange tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; leaving their natural genius to mechanical and physical, or natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected; which would be of exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of their Life.
Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.
So Alice is a project that we worked on for a long, long time. It's a novel way to teach computer programming. Kids make movies and games. The head fake -- again, we're back to the head fakes. The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they're learning something else. I've done it my whole career. And the head fake here is that they're learning to program but they just think they're making movies and video games. 
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. 
One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans -- anything except reason.
We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a mans knows at twenty are no longer true at forty -- and half the things he knows at forty hadn't been discovered when he was twenty?
Liberals have invented whole college majors -- psychology, sociology, women's studies -- to prove that nothing is anybody's fault.Top 100 Topics