Quotes About Education

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

Anyone can popularize science if he oversimplifies.

If you need a geography lesson in order to know where Africa is – if, by age seventeen, you have somehow failed to imbibe such knowledge by osmosis or simple curiosity – you surely don't have the sort of mind that would benefit from a university education.

The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist.

the higher one's intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold "beliefs" of any kind.

Philosophy and the subjects known as 'humanities' are still taught almost as if Darwin had never lived.

children should be taught not so much what to think as how to think.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.

some people, educationally over-endowed with the tools of philosophy, cannot resist poking in their scholarly apparatus where it isn't helpful. I am reminded of P. B. Medawar's remark about the attractions of 'philosophy-fiction' to 'a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought'.

The purpose of a lecture should not be to impart information. There are books, libraries, nowadays the internet, for that. A lecture should inspire and provoke thought.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Among their many interesting results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious). Religiosity is also negatively correlated with interest in science and (strongly) with political liberalism.

There is in every village a torch – the teacher: and an extinguisher – the clergyman. VICTOR HUGO

That 45 per cent figure really is something of a national educational disgrace. You'd have to travel right past Europe to the theocratic societies around the Middle East before you hit a comparable level of anti-scientific miseducation. It is bafflingly paradoxical that the United States is by far the world's leading scientific nation while simultaneously housing the most scientifically illiterate populace outside the Third World.

Debemos enseñar a nuestros hijos el altruismo ya que no podemos esperar que éste forme parte de su naturaleza biológica

There is in every village a torch—the teacher: and an extinguisher—the clergyman.

Moving on from the elite scientists of the National Academy and the Royal Society, is there any evidence that, in the population at large, atheists are likely to be drawn from among the better educated and more intelligent?

The Jesuit boast, 'Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man,' is no less accurate (or sinister) for being hackneyed.

James Dobson, founder of today's infamous 'Focus on the Family' movement,fn1 is equally acquainted with the principle: 'Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience – what they see, hear, think, and believe – will determine the future course for the nation.'78

Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one's intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection. That is, the higher one's intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold "beliefs" of any kind.

Even without physical abduction, isn't it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?

Richard Dawkins

I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to some particular religion or another. Small children are too young to decide their views on the origins of the cosmos, of life and of morals. The very sound of the phrase Christian child or Muslim child should grate like fingernails on a blackboard.

Segregated schools. Children are educated, again often from a very early age, with members of a religious in-group and seperately from children whose families adhere to other religions.