Quotes about Education

Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away.  Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously  in what we think we know best.  Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.

Most of my friends, and most of my friends' children, also have degrees. That doesnt mean that they've managed to find the kind of work they wanted. Not at all.

They went to university because someone, at a time when universities were important, said that, in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree.

And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers. Perhaps this is the moment to review the situation. Doctors, engineers, scientists, and lawyers need to go to university, but does everyone?

I'll let these lines by Robert Frost provide the answer:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The love of God is not taught.  No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else.  And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us.  Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction.  In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love.  You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with help of His grace.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Most of my parents' friends and most of my parents' friends' children also have degrees.  This doesn't mean that they've managed to find the kind of work they wanted.  Not at all; they went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree.  And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications.

None of these is you.

Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.

Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!

This education has reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage . . . What about our own roots? . . . I am up against the system, the whole method and approach of a system of education which makes us morons, cultural morons, but efficient clerks for all your business and administration offices.

Study as if you have not reached your goal - hold it as if you were afraid of losing what you have.

Zan Yu said, "Once there are so many people, what should be done?"

"Enrich them," said the Master.

"Once they are enriched, what next?"

"Educate them."

If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance.

Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands - Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.

The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book.

The sense of justice springs from self-respect; both are coeval with our birth. Children are born with an innate sense of justice; it usually takes twelve years of public schooling and four more years of college to beat it out of them.

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds.

To me philosophy like "intelligence" or "wisdom" is definitely a moving target, whose essence keeps metamorphosing as one gains more resources to penetrate it better. It seems only natural to me that Heraclitus would intuitively leave his murky manuscript ON PHYSIS in the temple of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, i.e. the dialectic of living animal instinct with human acuity. Philosophers are after live and very cunning prey, already I began to think of my courses at LSU in terms of safaris and big game hunts, except that more and more they dealt not with ordinary species but with monsters, dragons, still-living dinosaurs of ideologies and orthodoxies.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.

Science too often trivializes the profound, answering questions that are very different from the ones that were asked.  To formulate a question suitable for scientific research too often requires us to forget what it was that we really wanted to know.

There are two most fundamental Great Principles in Reality Itself that are relevant and most essential for humankind.

The First Great Principle in Reality Itself is intrinsic egolessness (or no-"self").

The Second Great Principle in Reality Itself is subordinate only to the First Great Principle in Reality Itself.

The Second Great Principle in Reality Itself is prior unity (or no-"difference").

If you only try to do the things where you win, then you'll never try to do anything worth doing.

We are living in a period of tumult and change. We face new threats that will require more than new technologies. To defend freedom in the 21st century, you will have to bring innovation, flexibility, and agility to your posts.

Don't be afraid to think for yourself - to take risks, and try new things. You may meet resistance along the way - expect opposition - but don't be dissuaded. Progress in life has come generally from those who swim upstream.

Whatever new threats and challenges may emerge, our nation will be able to face them squarely, deal with them, and yet allow our people to continue to live free and unafraid. The decisions you make, the courage and creativity you bring to your responsibilities, will determine America's future. Liberty and our way of life are fragile gifts - their care is in your hands. We thank you for stepping forward to shoulder that immense responsibility. Your country is grateful, and proud of each of you.

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."

Governments would rather spend their money on another bomber than education, and why do we fear black men when every bit of suffering in our lives has a Caucasian face attached to it?

Nothing in the matter-of-fact or finite order of experience is directly or obviously grounded in actual authoritative principles; phenomena do not permit us to see through them to their infinite preconditions, and certainly not even to comprehend or conceptualize what kinds of things those preconditions may be. It is only through holistic and variably stressed principles that we can see the formation or architectonics of finite realities, in accordance with those lawful and ordering forces. There is no empirical path to principles, no psychological route to values or ultimate duties or essential character: hundreds of millions of human beings may despair of not having "salvation" who do not and cannot ever comprehend what the issue even is, i.e. the onslaught of the finite order that threatens to make our ambiguously finite/infinite spirit into just another finite particle within the finite world. We have to be always carrying out our self-education dialectically, with one eye on each domain, the finite and the infinite, each of which demands its own peculiar modus of intelligence and insight from us.

"The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn."