Quotes about education
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Thomas Carlyle photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Anu Partanen photo
Willie Mays photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo

“In my personal and professional Jewish life, my belief is that we must educate ourselves before we can reach out to others.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

http://forward.com/articles/178634/trying-to-reach-out-to-unaffiliated-jews/

Mikhail Kalashnikov photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Kazuo Ishiguro photo

“A poet educated to his finger tips will tend to be allusive”

Kenneth Allott (1912–1973) Irish poet

Introduction Contemporary Verse, Ed Kenneth Allott, Penguin Books, London 1950

Henry Adams photo
Michelle Obama photo
N.T. Wright photo
Moses Hess photo
Ivor Grattan-Guinness photo

“In addition, the teaching of theories from axioms, or some close imitation of them such as the basic laws of an algebra, is usually an educational disaster.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Source: The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences (2000), p. 739.

Phil Hartman photo

“Troy: Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such educational films as "Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" and "Firecrackers: The Silent Killer."”

Phil Hartman (1948–1998) Canadian American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist

On the Simpsons, Troy McClure

Conrad Black photo

“The present government of Quebec is the most financially and intellectually corrupt in the history of the province. There are the shady deals, brazenly conducted, and the broken promises, most conspicuously that of last October to retain Bill 63… The government dragged out the ancient and totally fictitious spectre of assimilation to justify Bill 22 and its rejection of the right of free choice in education, its its reduction of English education to the lowest echelon of ministerial whim, its assault upon freedom of expression through the regulation of the internal and external language of businesses and other organizations, and its creation of a fatuous new linguistic bureaucracy that will conduct a system of organized denunciation, harassment, and patronage… There is a paralytic social sickness in Quebec. In all this debate, not a single French Quebecker has objected to Bill 22 on the grounds that it was undemocratic or a reduction of liberties exercised in the province. The Quebec Civil Liberties Union, founded by Pierre Trudeau, from which one might have expected such sentiments, has instead demanded the abolition of English education, and this through the spokemanship of Jean-Louis Roy, who derives his income from McGill University…. It is clear that Mr. Bourassa… is now going to try to eliminate the Parti Quebecois by a policy of gradual scapegoatism directed against the non-French elements in the province… The English community here, still deluding itself with the illusion of Montreal as an incomparably fine place to live, is leaderless and irrelevant, except as the hostage of a dishonest government. Last month one of the most moderate ministers, Guy St-Pierre, told an English businessman's group, 'If you don't like Quebec, you can leave it.”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

With sadness but with certitude, I accept that choice.
radio broadcast on 26 July 1974, the day Black left Quebec for good
The Establishment Man by Peter Newman

Patrick Buchanan photo
A. James Gregor photo
Orson Welles photo

“My father once told me that the art of receiving a compliment is, of all things, the sign of a civilized man. He died soon afterwards, leaving my education in this important matter sadly incomplete; I'm only glad that, on this, the occasion of the rarest compliment he ever could have dreamed of, that he isn't here to see his son so publicly at a loss. In receiving a compliment, or in trying to, the words are all worn out by now. They're polluted by ham and corn. And, when you try to scratch around for some new ones, it's just an exercise in empty cleverness. What I feel this evening, is not very clever. it's the very opposite of emptiness. The corny old phrase is the only one I know to say it: my heart is full; with a full heart, with all of it, I thank you. This is Samuel Johnson, on the subject of what he calls contrarieties: "there are goods, so opposed that we cannot seize both, and, in trying, fail to seize either. Flatter not yourself, he says, with contrarieties. Of the blessings set before you, make your choice. No man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source, and from the mouth of the nile." For this business of contrarieties has to do with us. With you, who are paying me this compliment, and for me, who has strayed so far from this hometown of ours. Not that I am alone in this, or unique, I am never that; but there are a few of us left in this conglomerated world of us who still trudge stubbornly along this lonely rocky road; and this is in fact our contrariety. We don't move nearly as fast as our cousins on the freeway; we don't even get as much accomplished just as the family sized farm can't possibly raise as many crops or get as much profit as the agricultural factory of today. What we do come up with has no special right to call itself better it's just.. different. No if there's any excuse for us it all, it's that we're simply following the old American tradition of the maverick, and we are a vanishing breed. This honor I can only accept in the name of all the mavericks. And also, as a tribute to the generosity of all the rest of you; to the givers, to the ones with fixed addresses. A maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think that it's the only way, or ever claim that it's the best one, except maybe for himself. And don't imagine that this raggle-taggle gypsy-o is claiming to be free. It's just that some of the necessities to which I am a slave are different from yours. As a director, for instance, I pay myself out of my acting jobs. I use my own work to subsidize my work (in other words I'm crazy). But not crazy enough to pretend to be free. But it's a fact that many of the films you've seen tonight could never have been made otherwise. Or, if otherwise, well, they might have been better, but certainly they wouldn't have been mine. The truth is I don't believe that this great evening would ever have brightened my life if it wasn't for this: my own, particular, contrariety. Let us raise our cups, then, standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river, to what really matters to us all: to our crazy, beloved profession, to the movies — to good movies, to every possible kind.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given upon his acceptance of the AFI Lifetime Achievement award. Viewable http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJnxClGamA&list=HL1349840607&feature=mh_lolz

“I think there are three possible scenarios for the future of Chinese writing, in all of which the government plays a major role. In the first, and at present apparently the least likely scenario, the government abandons its hostility to an expanded role for Pinyin and instead fosters a climate of digraphia and biliteracy in which those who can do so become literate in both characters and Pinyin, and those who cannot are at least literate in Pinyin. This is essentially a reversion to the Latinization movement of the 1930s and 1940s, when Mao Zedong and other high Communist Party officials like Xu Teli, the commissioner of education in Yan'an, lent their prestigious support to the New Writing. Such a change within the governing bureaucracy would in all likelihood result in an explosion of activity that might end in Pinyin ascendancy in use over characters in less than a generation.
In the second scenario the government adopts a policy of benign indifference that involves abandoning its hostility toward Pinyin but without actively supporting it, leaving it up to the rival protagonists of the two systems to contest for supremacy among themselves. This is likely to result in a somewhat longer struggle.
In the third scenario the government continues its present policy of repression, resulting in a much more protracted struggle (though surely not as long as the fascinating parallel struggle between Latin and Italian in Italy, where it took 500 [! ] years after Dante’s start in 1292 for academics, the last holdouts, to finally abandon their long resistance and start using Italian in university lectures).47 In this long struggle, PCs and mobile phones and other innovations still to come will undoubtedly allow more and more advocates of writing reform to escape the stranglehold of officialdom, to the point where (in a century or so?) characters are finally relegated to the status of Latin in the West.
My own view is that this is actually the least likely scenario, the most probable one being that the Chinese pragmatism that has manifested itself so strongly in economics will extend further into writing, and that, perhaps sooner rather than later, given the success of the promotion of Mandarin, some influential Party bureaucrats will finally arrive at the conclusion that the "some day in the future" anticipated by Mao has arrived, and that wholehearted Party support should now be unleashed for his anticipated "basic reform."”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

In any case it is basically all a matter of time. And the decisive factor that will seal the ultimate fate of Chinese characters is the new reality, noted by a perceptive observer, that "the PC is mightier than the Pen."
"The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006, p. 20-21) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf
"The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006)

Fulton J. Sheen photo

“[H]e is of the intelligentsia (which means he has been educated beyond his intelligence).”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 6, p. 105

Allen C. Guelzo photo

“Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it and there's no admission fee.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

(Tristan Manco. Stencil Graffiti)
Other sources

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt photo

“Yesterday’s woman was expected to have individual interests, caring for the brightness of the hearth fire and the comforts of the family group. Today she has inherited the community and the community’s welfare. Civics, religion and education have become her field of activity. She is homemaker and citizen.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Writing in Mills Quarterly in 1917, as quoted in Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society Archives, 3 July 2018, Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt (1877-1948) http://www.uuwhs.org/womenwest.php,

Peter F. Drucker photo
Abdullah Ensour photo
Georg Brandes photo

“The educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 11

Irene Dunne photo

“In addition to actual dramatic training and experience, I'd want as much education as possible.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

If You Want Success (Screenland Interview) (1961)

Khaled Hosseini photo
Noam Chomsky photo
George William Curtis photo

“Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Glenn Beck photo
Nicole Lapin photo

“Johann Herbart’s work on education and particularly mathematical psychology influenced me. I think mathematics is the pure instance of construct functioning—the model of human behaviour.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Attributed to George A. Kelly in Hinkle (1970, p. 91), as cited in: Fay Fransella and Robert A. Neimeyer. "George Alexander Kelly: The man and his theory." International handbook of personal construct psychology (2003): 21-31.

Nélson Rodrigues photo

“Sex education should only be taught by veterinarians.”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

"As 1.000 melhores frases de Nelson Rodrigues" Companhia das Letras, 1997)

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan photo
Steven Chu photo

“I'm the least-educated person in my immediate family. My two other brothers have multiple advanced degrees, and I only have one. […] Actually, now that I've got a Nobel Prize, I feel equal.”

Steven Chu (1948) American physicist, former United States Secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate

Interview by Spencer Michels, The NewsHour, PBS, 2 May 2007 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june07/climatechange_05-02.html

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Andrew Fraknoi photo

“… one of the most detrimental (and least discussed) effects of the crisis in science education in the world today is that we are creating a population increasingly unable to think skeptically about a wide range of issues.”

Andrew Fraknoi (1948) astronomer

in Science Education and the Crisis of Gullibility, in an edition by [Eric Chaisson, Tae-Chang Kim, The thirteenth labor, CRC Press, 1999, 9057005387, 71]

Calvin Coolidge photo
Linus Torvalds photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“We…would nevertheless make it clear that entirely independent political structures are impossible here [in the Baltic]…They cannot lead an isolated existence between the colossi of West and East. We hope that they will seek and find this support with us. The German occupation will have to continue for a long time, lest the anarchy we have just been combating should arise again. We shall have to safeguard the position of the Germans, a position consistent with their economic and cultural achievements…Herr Scheiddemann, said that we have made ourselves new enemies in the world through our push in the East…Had we continued the negotiations, we should still be sitting with Herr Trotski in Brest Litovsk. As it is, the advance has brought us peace in a few days and I think we should recognise this and not delude ourselves, particularly as regards the East, that if by resolutions made here in the Reichstag or through our Government's acceptance of the entirely welcome initiative of His Holiness the Pope, we had agreed to a peace without indemnities and annexations, we should have had peace in the East. In view of our situation as a whole, I should regard a fresh peace offer as an evil. My chief objection is against the detachment of the Belgian question from the whole complex of the question of peace. It is precisely if Belgium is not to be annexed that Belgium is the best dead pledge we hold, notably as regards England. The restoration of Belgium before we conclude peace with England seems to me an utter political and diplomatic impossibility…There is a great difference between the first set of terms at Brest-Litovsk and the ultimatum that we have now presented, and the blame for this change rests with those who refused to come to an agreement with Germany and who, consequently, must now feel her power. We are just as free to choose between understanding and the exploitation of victory in the case of the West, and I hope that these eight or fourteen days that have elapsed between the first set of peace terms in Brest-Litovsk and the second set, may also have an educational effect in that direction.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (25 February 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 159-160
1910s

Ernest Hollings photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“We have a crisis in higher education today. Too many of our young people cannot afford a college education and those who are leaving college are faced with crushing debt. It is a national disgrace that hundreds of thousands of young Americans today do not go to college, not because they are unqualified, but because they cannot afford it. This is absolutely counterproductive to our efforts to create a strong competitive economy and a vibrant middle class. This disgrace has got to end. In a global economy, when our young people are competing with workers from around the world, we have got to have the best educated workforce possible. And, that means that we have got to make college affordable. We have got to make sure that every qualified American in this country who wants to go to college can go to college -- regardless of income. Further, it is unacceptable that 40 million Americans are drowning in more than $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. It is unacceptable that millions of college graduates cannot afford to buy their first home or their first new car because of the high interest rates they are paying on student debt. It is unacceptable that, in many instances, interest rates on student loans are two to three times higher than on auto loans.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Bernie Sanders Statement by Senator Bernard Sanders on the College for All Act http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/051915-highered/?inline=file (19 May 2015)
2010s, 2015

Richard Dawkins photo
Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo
Peter D. Schiff photo

“The Founding Fathers, those who wrote the Constitution and founded the American Republic, they understood the benefits of sound money and the evils of paper money. They’ve put America on a gold standard from the very birth of the republic and we should heed their wise - they were very learned men. I think they were much more educated and understanding about economics then the people who lead the U. S. today. So, to try to suggest that we will have less robust economy if we went back to gold standard - mostly, that’s propaganda from Central Bankers and politicians, who want to scare us from going back to something that works, because when you go back to free market, the politicians and bankers will lose their power, and they want to maintain their power by scaring people into thinking that if we just go back to freedom and market forces, that’s somehow is going to be bad and we have to surrender our freedoms to politicians and bankers because they know much better than the market. They can define the proper rate of interest and they can manage the money supplier, centrally planning the economy, and it’s going to be more effective than free market capitalism - and that is just not the case.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/peter-schiff-for-us-senate/http://rt.com/shows/sophieco/190800-economy-dollar-financial-armageddon/
Economic Views

Shimon Peres photo

“India represents the new world in a unique sense. Traditionally democracies were trying to bring equality to all walks of life, today there is a change. Democracy wants to enable every country to have the equal right to be different; it's a collection of differences, not an attempt to force or impose equality on every country. I think India is the greatest show of how so many differences in language, in sects can coexist facing great suffering and keeping full freedom… Many of the countries in the Middle East should learn from you how to escape poverty. You didn't escape poverty by getting American dollars or Russian Roubles but by introducing your own internal reforms and by understanding that the new call of modernity is science. In between the spiritual wealth of Gandhi and the earthly wisdom of Nehru, you combined a great performance of spirit and practice to escape poverty…I know you still have a long way to go but you do it without compromising freedom. The temptation when you're such a large country to introduce discipline and imposition is great but you tried to do it, to make progress not with force and discipline but in an open way. Many of us were educated on the literature of India when we fell in love we read Rabindranath Tagore and when we matured we tried to understand Gandhi.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

Israeli President Shimon Peres praises India as greatest 'show of co-existence' http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-04/news/35594466_1_greatest-show-mahatma-gandhi-democracies (4 December 2012)

John F. Kennedy photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Attributed

Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Mark Pattison photo
Rudolf Steiner photo
Woodrow Wilson photo
Elizabeth Warren photo
John Steinbeck photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
John Adams photo

“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Source: 1780s, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787), Ch. 3 Marchamont Nedham : Errors of Government and Rules of Policy" Seventh Rule

James Frazer photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo
Tony Abbott photo

“No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Clarifying his election commitments in an interview with Anton Enus on SBS News and subsequently quoted in "Then and now: the Abbott government's broken promises" http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/then-and-now-the-abbott-governments-broken-promises-20140514-zrcfr.html Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2013.
2013

Zephyr Teachout photo
Henry Adams photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Lev Leviev photo

“There’s a big difference between education and knowledge. The moment that we don’t invest in educating Jewish children according to the roots that were the basis of our education for thousands of years, we are knowledge-givers rather than educators.”

Lev Leviev (1956) Soviet-born Israeli businessman, philanthropist and investor

Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 7 March 2008 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId58607&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrLev%20leviev&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

Boutros Boutros-Ghali photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
Kancha Ilaiah photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
Aron Ra photo
Lydia Sigourney photo

“We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?”

Lydia Sigourney (1791–1865) American poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 51.

Abbie Hoffman photo

“The best way to educate oneself is to become part of the revolution.”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 184.

Joseph Beuys photo
Alex Salmond photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“I saw that bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

Narayana Guru photo

“The legacy of Narayan Guru is a society elevated, in accord, the lower classes educated and full of dignity and a feeling of self-worth.”

Narayana Guru (1855–1928) Indian social reformer

Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743

Plutarch photo

“The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in the felicity of lighting on good education.”

Moralia, Of the Training of Children
Variant: The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

African Spir photo
Petula Clark photo
Malala Yousafzai photo
Jane Jacobs photo