Quotes About Education

His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate.

I'll tell you, Margie, most of those things you say are worth having, I don't know about. You have a better education than I did. Music, books, wine, art, all that—I'll tell you, I think if you're happy they must be nice to have, but if you're unhappy they don't help much. The main thing is happiness.

There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame as the conviction of ignorance, yet we are all ignorant of nearly everything there is to be known.

Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.

There is nothing I hold so cheap as a learned man , except an unlearned one .

Misfortune, the teacher of superstition. - Attributed by Walpole to his friend, Richard Bentley.

Education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world.

I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination.

Emma Willard told the legislature that the education of women has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty The problem, she said, was that the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has made into a standard for the formation of the female character. Reason and religion teach us, she said, that we too are primary existences...not the satellites of men.

a good education is a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, because each enrich the other. The accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient without action

The true task of education, Alfred North Whitehead cautioned, is to abjure stale knowledge. "Knowledge does not keep any better than fish," he said. We need to keep it alive, vital, potent.

The owners of factories are more concerned than other classes and interests in the intelligence of their laborers. When the latter are well-educated and the former are disposed to deal justly, controversies and strikes can never occur, nor can the minds of the masses be prejudiced by demagogues and controlled by temporary and factious considerations.

In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today.

Whenever I hear that the government must not get involved in helping people, that this must be left to "private enterprise," I think of the G.I. Bill and its marvelous nonbureaucratic efficiency. There are certain necessities—housing, medical care, education—about which private enterprise gives not a hoot (supplying these to the poor is not profitable, and private enterprise won't act without profit).

If Chomsky says the educational system is an undemocratic system, you can say, well, you're there, you have a position at MIT. Well, it's perfectly attuned to the American system of control, a very sophisticated system of control that allows just enough dissidence so that those in power can point to the fact that the university is democratic but not enough dissidence to create a real danger to the system.

We tried to educate ourselves. I would invite the girls to my rooms, and we took turns reading poetry in English to improve our understanding of the language. One of our favorites was Thomas Hood's Song of the Shirt, and another . . . Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mask of Anarchy. . . . Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Which in sleep had fallen on you- Ye are many, they are few!

Then Gregory lowered his voice, suddenly serious. "But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them.

TEACHER:: Now children, you don't think white people are any better than you because they have straight hair and white faces? STUDENTS:: No, sir. TEACHER:: No, they are no better, but they are different, they possess great power, they formed this great government, they control this vast country. . . . Now what makes them different from you? STUDENTS:: Money! TEACHER:: Yes, but what enabled them to obtain it? How did they get money? STUDENTS:: Got it off us, stole it off we all!

The resources of a university, of a college, should not be wasted in merely academic pursuits.

It was the job of education, he said, to smash through this make-believe and give black people a realistic picture of themselves and of the world.

And Bernice Johnson, who organized the Albany Freedom Singers and was expelled from Albany State College for her determined involvement in the movement.

But I was open to anything my students wanted to do, refusing to accept the idea that a teacher should confine his teaching to the classroom when so much was at stake outside it.

Women struggled to enter the all-male professional schools. Dr. Harriot Hunt, a woman physician who began to practice in 1835, was twice refused admission to Harvard Medical School. But she carried on her practice, mostly among women and children. She believed strongly in diet, exercise, hygiene, and mental health. She organized a Ladies Physiological Society in 1843 where she gave monthly talks. She remained single, defying convention here too.

We need to create a culture in this country in which reading and resistance go hand-in-hand.