From interview with Rajeev Masand
Quotes about education
page 2
“Miscellaneous Observations,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #48
To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Detroit, Michigan (12 April 1964)
(2001), "The Intellectual Class Struggle," New York Times, Jan. 6, 2001
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
No findable citation to Socrates. First appears in this form in the 1990s, such as in the Douglas Bradley article "Lighting a Flame in the Kickapoo Valley", Wisconsin Ideas, UW System, 1994. It appears to be a variant on a statement from Plutarch in On Listening to Lectures: "The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth." Alternate translation, from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1927 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/De_auditu*.html: "For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth." Often quoted as, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." Variants of the quote that are correctly attributed to Plutarch but which substitute "education" for "the mind" date back at least as far as the 1960s, as seen in the 1968 book Vision and Image by James Johnson Sweeney, p. 119 http://books.google.com/books?id=d58FAAAAMAAJ&q=plutarch#search_anchor.
Variants with "education" are also sometimes misattributed to William Butler Yeats, as in the 1993 book The Harper Book of Quotations (third edition), p. 138 http://books.google.com/books?id=THl7kUfSqCUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false. In the previously-mentioned Vision and Image, the misquote of Plutarch involving "education" (which has exactly the same wording as the quote attributed to Yeats in The Harper Book of Quotations) is immediately preceded by a different quote from Yeats ("Culture does not consist in acquiring opinions but in getting rid of them"), so it's possible this is the source of the confusion—see the snippets here http://books.google.com/books?id=d58FAAAAMAAJ&q=yeats+culture#search_anchor and here http://books.google.com/books?id=d58FAAAAMAAJ&q=%22getting+rid+of+them%22#search_anchor.
The misattribution may also be related to a statement about Plato's views made by Benjamin Jowett in the introduction to his translation of Plato's Republic (in which all the main ideas were attributed to Socrates, as in all of Plato's works), on p. cci http://books.google.com/books?id=Cg_QX4yoOSQC&pg=PR201#v=onepage&q&f=false of the third edition (1888): "Education is represented by him, not as the filling of a vessel, but as the turning the eye of the soul towards the light." Jowett seems to be loosely paraphrasing a statement Plato attributes to Socrates in a dialogue with Glaucon, in sections 518b http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D7%3Asection%3D518b– 518c http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D7%3Asection%3D518c of book 7 of The Republic, where Socrates says: "education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes … But our present argument indicates that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body."
Further discussion of the history of this quote can be found in this entry http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ from the "Quote Investigator" website.
Misattributed
Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.
that's my slogan.
Huey Long (T. Harry Williams, Huey Long, p. 706)
The Big Picture, 1996
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 125]
From Fukuzawa Yukichi on Japanese Women (1988), trans. Kiyooka Eiichi.
As quoted in The Reader's Digest (1992) Vol. 140, p. 194
Gakumon no Susume [An Encouragement of Learning] (1872–1876).
Endorsement of President Jimmy Carter's Education Program - Feb. 7, 1979.
University of Havana address (2005)
Context: Man is born egotistical, a result of the conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that fills us with virtues. Nature makes us do things instinctively; one of these is the instinct for survival which can lead to infamy, while on the other side, our conscience can lead us to great acts of heroism. It doesn’t matter what each one of us is like, how different we are from each other, but when we unite we become one.
It is amazing that in spite of the differences between human beings, they can become as one in a single instant or they can be millions, and they can be a million strong just through their ideas. Nobody followed the Revolution as a cult to anyone or because they felt personal sympathy with any one person. It is only by embracing certain values and ideas that an entire people can develop the same willingness to make sacrifices of any one of those who loyally and sincerely try to lead them toward their destiny.
Source: Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It (1993), p. 15
“Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.”
Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 64.
Context: My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.
Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this:
"You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."
“Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.”
Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By Any Means Necessary (1970)
Times of India in: p. 347.
About Zakir Hussain, Quest for Truth (1999)
1997
Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones
“The giving of love is an education in itself.”
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
As quoted in Stepping Stones : The Complete Bible Narratives (1941)
Disputed
“The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.”
“And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.”
Source: Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers' Power
“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”
Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature (9 March 1832)
1830s
Context: Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves.
“Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.”
“Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.”
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Variant: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Context: The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
“Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.”
Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 178
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
“The educator has the duty of not being neutral.”
Source: We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
“Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
“From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.”
Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog
“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
Source: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
“Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.”
Le plus pressé, ce n'est pas que l'État enseigne, mais qu'il laisse enseigner. Tous les monopoles sont détestables, mais le pire de tous, c'est le monopole de l'enseignement.
In 'Cursed Money!', final thought.
The Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Interest (1849–1850)
Source: What Is Money?
“It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated.”
Source: Getting Well https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0787307785 (Health Research Books, 1993), p. 137.
“I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.”
Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
“Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.”
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Manitoba: Clandeboye, p. 168.
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
“Katczinsky says it is all to do with education - it softens the brain.”
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front
As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
Letter from Lenin to Gorky https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/g2aleks.html, Sept. 15, 1919
1910s
Source: The Letters Of Lenin
“When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.”
“The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves”
“Believe me, the library is the temple of God. Education is the most sacred religion of all.”
“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.”
Source: Notebook
Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 346
“All of life is a constant education.”
Source: The Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt
Source: Sceptical Essays
Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)
Context: For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favour life as a whole. To this can be added the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict. Now that we are gaining control of the primary historical role imposed on us of sustaining life in the context of the home and family, it is time to apply in the arena of the world the wisdom and experience thus gained in activities of peace over so many thousands of years. The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 176; cited in Münsterberg (113; 52)
E. J. Corey, Barbara Czakó, László Kürti, Molecules and Medicine (2007). Introduction
2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)
Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 98-100 (1844)
About
“If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington DC.”
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (December 10, 2014)
2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)
2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)
“It is life itself that educates.”
Das Leben bildet.
Schwanengesang [Swan Song] (1826)
Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 220
Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 12: Education and Discipline