quotations about education
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech delivered as candidate for the state legislature, March 9, 1832
Education is not the means of showing people how to get what they want. Education is an exercise by means of which enough men, it is hoped, will learn to want what is worth having.
RONALD REAGAN
If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education".... Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual -- a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis ... deals a severe blow to education across the board.... We need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.
PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, Oct. 8, 2009
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
A genuine love of learning is one of the two delinquencies which cause blindness and lead a young man to ruin.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with torture called education.
JOHN UPDIKE
The Centaur
Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
In the march of universal improvement, education must lead the van.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Tell me one more time, people now
What do you say?
Without an education
You might as well be dead
JAMES BROWN
"Don't Be a Dropout"
As we educate a child -- removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience -- we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence -- towards perfection.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
How can man be intelligent, happy, or useful, without the culture and discipline of education? It is this that smooths and polishes the roughnesses of his nature. It is this that unlocks the prison-house of his mind, and releases the captive.
HERMAN HUMPHREY
an address delivered at the Collegiate Institution in Amherst, Oct. 15, 1823
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
HENRY PETER BROUGHAM
Better untaught than ill-taught.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
The education already given to the people creates the necessity of giving them more.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
As a father should provide for the religious education of his children, so should a government for the instruction of its subjects.
CATHERINE SINCLAIR
Modern Accomplishments; The March of the Intellect
'Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
ALEXANDER POPE
Moral Essays
The countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow.
BARACK OBAMA
press conference, Mar. 17, 2009
Children should not be coddled in their intellectual training any more than in their physical; and though the studies should be made interesting the interest should arise out of the studies themselves. We have bred a generation that cannot digest anything intellectual but tablets of peptonized food. One sees that in the popular papers with their brevity, still increasing in brevity as far as brevity can increase, and in the capacity for thought of our rulers.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled. Every man was to be trained, not only to the use of arms, but of his wits also; and it is these which alone make the others effective weapons for the maintenance of freedom.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose