Quotes About Education

The author meets an African-American who observes that his fellows who begin with aspirations to a good education, solid career, and the raising of a family slowly lose that incentive. Even those who have a college education, he observes, need to take menial jobs and begin to look for excitement in less productive places.

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT'S WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE - TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY!; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS!

In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?

The day women stop reading—that's the day the novel dies!

Moreover, there was what Amy called "the cocksuckers' contingent of the country"—what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots—and they were too set in their ways or too poorly educated (or both) to see beyond the ceaseless flag-waving and nationalistic bluster.

Stewart, Jr. who was called Stewie Two, graduated from Steering before Garp was even of age to enter the school; Jenny treated Stewie Two twice for a sprained ankle and once for gonorrhea. He later went through Harvard Business School, a staph infection, and a divorce.

The English teacher kept his fingers crossed about Exeter; if the boy was accepted, Mr. Leary hoped the school would be so rigorous that it might save young Baciagalupo from the more unsavory aspects of his imagination. At Exeter, maybe the mechanics of writing would be so thoroughly demanding and time-consuming that Danny would become a more intellectual writer. (Meaning what, exactly? Not quite such a creative one?)

In schools—even in good schools, like Exeter—they tend to teach the shorter books by the great authors; at least they begin with those. Thus it was Billy Budd, Sailor that introduced me to Melville, which led me to the library, where I discovered Moby Dick on my own.

Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination. Her

Dear God!" the cook cried. "Soon all the wood on Twisted River will be pulpwood—for paper! What about toboggans is worse than paper?" "Books are made from paper!" Ketchum declared. "What role do toboggans play in your son's education?

You have taught yourself to read English, too," Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason. "English is just a little different—I can understand it," the boy told him

Goodness gracious!" my grandmother said. "Why didn't you begin with Harvard?" "It's not important to him," my mother said. But Harvard '45 was important enough to my grandmother to calm her troubled hands; they left her brooch alone, and returned to rest in her lap.

It is the well educated who will improve society—and they will improve it, at first, by criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as students, the brighter of them will begin their improvements upon society by criticizing us.

The day women stop reading—that's the day the novel dies!" the

But Americans are not great historians, and so, for years—educated by my neighbor—I thought that sagamore was an Indian word for lake.

The classes they taught were for no student's special development; their interests were the subject themselves—their passions were for the politics of the university, or of their own departments within it—and their overall view of us students was that we should conform ourselves to their methods of their disciplines of study.

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of people she had met.

Loving long novels plays havoc with going to school

The problem was that blowing things up was the only thing Skelly had ever been taught to do.

But that's the purpose of education! To begin to understand! Then to want to understand!

The slavery of ignorance is as wicked as any other kind. Perhaps it's the crudest slavery of all, because any man can see an iron cuff on his own leg, but it's hard to detect an invisible one." She watched for a reaction.

Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn at no other.