Quotes about education
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Jair Bolsonaro photo

“With distance education, you help to combat Marxism.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Bolsonaro propõe ensino a distância para combater marxismo e reduzir custos https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2018/08/bolsonaro-propoe-ensino-a-distancia-para-combater-marxismo-e-reduzir-custos.shtml. Folha de S.Paulo (7 August 2018).

Khosrow Bagheri photo

“Human beings learn from their errors and error during a process can have educational effect, but why the humans make the mistakes? Because the process of education is the one of learning from errors. It means that the ones make the mistakes and this gives them the power of motivational ability.”

Khosrow Bagheri (1957) Iranian philosopher of education

Source: Website of Mehr News Agency, 2017 http://www.mehrnews.com/news/3954046/%D9%BE%D8%B0%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%B4-%D8%AE%D8%B7%D8%A7-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%AA%D8%B1%D8%A8%DB%8C%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%B6%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B1%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA

Benito Mussolini photo

“I am making superhuman efforts to educate this people. When they have learnt to obey, they will believe what I tell them.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption (2006) by Clive Foss ISBN 1905204965
Undated

“Love, though sweet, must know its proper station
And never seek to rival education.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Golden Ass (1999)

John Wallis photo
Heather Brooke photo
Leon R. Kass photo
Robert Owen photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“The will—the one thing it is most important to educate—we neglect.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 113

Marcel Duchamp photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo
Sung-Yoon Lee photo

“En route to Tokyo in 1945 to embark on the occupation of Japan, U. S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur laid out his goals for Japan to his aide, Maj. Gen. Courtney Whitney: "First destroy the military power, then build up representative government, enfranchise women, free political prisoners, liberate farmers, establish free labor, destroy monopolies, abolish police repression, liberate the press, liberalize education, and decentralize political power."”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

The transformation of North Korea will require nothing less.
https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/16/life_after_kim
Life After Kim
February 16, 2010
Foreign Policy
March 1, 2013
https://www.webcitation.org/6EyqdXfyA?url=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/16/life_after_kim?page=full
March 9, 2013
no

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“So it is in that spirit that I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it. The dedication of America to our traditions as an asylum for the oppressed is going to be upheld. I have directed the Departments of State and Justice and Health, Education, and Welfare to immediately make all the necessary arrangements to permit those in Cuba who seek freedom to make an orderly entry into the United States of America. Our first concern will be with those Cubans who have been separated from their children and their parents and their husbands and their wives and that are now in this country. Our next concern is with those who are imprisoned for political reasons. And I will send to the Congress tomorrow a request for supplementary funds of $12,600,000 to carry forth the commitment that I am making today. I am asking the Department of State to seek through the Swiss government immediately the agreement of the Cuban government in a request to the President of the International Red Cross Committee. The request is for the assistance of the Committee in processing the movement of refugees from Cuba to Miami. Miami will serve as a port of entry and a temporary stopping place for refugees as they settle in other parts of this country. And to all the voluntary agencies in the United States, I appeal for their continuation and expansion of their magnificent work. Their help is needed in the reception and the settlement of those who choose to leave Cuba. The Federal Government will work closely with these agencies in their tasks of charity and brotherhood. I want all the people of this great land of ours to know of the really enormous contribution which the compassionate citizens of Florida have made to humanity and to decency. And all States in this Union can join with Florida now in extending the hand of helpfulness and humanity to our Cuban brothers. The lesson of our times is sharp and clear in this movement of people from one land to another. Once again, it stamps the mark of failure on a regime when many of its citizens voluntarily choose to leave the land of their birth for a more hopeful home in America. The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people. And so we Americans will welcome these Cuban people. For the tides of history run strong, and in another day they can return to their homeland to find it cleansed of terror and free from fear. Over my shoulders here you can see Ellis Island, whose vacant corridors echo today the joyous sound of long ago voices. And today we can all believe that the lamp of this grand old lady is brighter today; and the golden door that she guards gleams more brilliantly in the light of an increased liberty for the people from all the countries of the globe. Thank you very much.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Bonnie-Jill Laflin photo
Henry Adams photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Bill Nye photo

“To exclude kids in formal education from science is bad for everybody.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, J.D. Velasco, Study: California's elementary schools barely teach science, The Whittier Daily News, California, October 25, 2011]

John Desmond Bernal photo

“At different stages in the educational process different changes are required. In schools the chief need is for a general change in the attitude towards science, which should be from the beginning an integral part and not a mere addition, often an optional addition, to the curriculum. Science should be taught not merely as a subject but should come into all subjects. Its importance in history and in modern life should be pointed out and illustrated. The old contrast, often amounting to hostility, between scientific and humane subjects need to be broken down and replaced by a scientific humanism. At the same time, the teaching of science proper requires to be humanized. The dry and factual presentation requires to be transformed, not by any appeal to mystical theory, but by emphasizing the living and dramatic character of scientific advance itself. Here the teaching of the history of science, not isolated as at present, but in close relation to general history teaching, would serve to correct the existing atmosphere of scientific dogmatism. It would show at the same time how secure are the conquests of science in the control they give over natural processes and how insecure and provisional, however necessary, are the rational interpretations, the theories and hypotheses put forward at each stage. Past history by itself is not enough, the latest developments of science should not be excluded because they have not yet passed the test of time. It is absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that science not only has changed but is continually changing, that it is an activity and not merely a body of facts. Throughout, the social implications of science, the powers that it puts into men's hands, the uses they could make of them and those which they in fact do, should be brought out and made real by a reference to immediate experience of ordinary life.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 246 : How such a method of teaching could become an integral part of general education is sketched by H. G. Wells' British Association address, "The Informative Content of Education," reprinted in World Brain (Mathuen, 1938).

Rudolf Rocker photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“We have been attempting to relieve ourselves and the other nations from the old theory of competitive armaments. In spite of all the arguments in favor of great military forces, no nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or to insure its victory in time of war. No nation ever will. Peace and security are more likely to result from fair and honorable dealings, and mutual agreements for a limitation of armaments among nations, than by any attempt at competition in squadrons and battalions. No doubt this country could, if it wished to spend more money, make a better military force, but that is only part of the problem which confronts our Government. The real question is whether spending more money to make a better military force would really make a better country. I would be the last to disparage the military art. It is an honorable and patriotic calling of the highest rank. But I can see no merit in any unnecessary expenditure of money to hire men to build fleets and carry muskets when international relations and agreements permit the turning of such resources into the making of good roads, the building of better homes, the promotion of education, and all the other arts of peace which minister to the advancement of human welfare. Happily, the position of our country is such among the other nations of the world that we have been and shall be warranted in proceeding in this direction.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Otto Neurath photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“In a sense [Lawrence] is the patron saint of all writers who have never had an Oxford or Cambridge education who are somewhat despised by those who have.”

'The Rage of D.H. Lawrence', The South Bank Show (TV), 1985
People, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence

James A. Garfield photo

“I am glad to be able to fortify my position on this point by the great name and ability of Theophilus Parsons, of the Harvard Law School. In discussing the necessity of negro suffrage at a recent public meeting in Boston, he says: "Some of the Southern States have among their statutes a law prohibiting the education of a colored man under a heavy penalty. The whole world calls this most inhuman, most infamous. And shall we say to the whites of those States, 'We give you complete and exclusive power of legislating about the education of the blacks; but beware, for if you lift them by education from their present condition, you do it under the penalty of forfeiting and losing your supremacy?' Will not slavery, with nearly all its evils, and with none of its compensation, come back at once? Not under its own detested name; it will call itself apprenticeship; it will put on the disguise of laws to prevent pauperism, by providing that every colored man who does not work in some prescribed way shall be arrested, and placed at the disposal of the authorities; or it will do its work by means of laws regulating wages and labor. However it be done, one thing is certain: if we take from the slaves all the protection and defence they found in slavery, and withhold from them all power of self-protection and self-defence, the race must perish, and we shall be their destroyers."”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

George William Curtis photo

“The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Gillian Anderson photo

“We shot the first five seasons up in Vancouver, so we were protected from the public mania, and the industry mania, for the most part. I was first exposed to it when I became pregnant in the first season, and I quickly learned the power of the machine; then again when I was trying to negotiate my salary to be closer to equal to what David [Duchovny] was making, rather than a quarter. Yes, it's been an ongoing education, but it continues to astound me.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On the wage gap and how The X-Files helped her understand the entertainment industry — Hunger TV "One From The Archives: The Interview: Gillian Anderson" http://www.hungertv.com/feature/interview-gillian-anderson/ (October 19, 2014)
2010s

Zoran Đinđić photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Sam Rayburn photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“Negationism and history-distortion require a large-scale effort and a very strong grip on the media of information and education. As soon as the grip loosens, at least the most blatant of the negationist concoctions are bound to be exposed, and its propounders lose all credibility. In 1988, the schools in the Soviet Union decided to suspend the history exams because "the history books are full of lies anyway."”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

The great lies and distortions of Soviet historiography are now items in the gallery of ridicule.... Just like the Russians have thrown Soviet historiography into the dustbin, Indian negationism will also be thrown out in the near future.
1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

Frederick Douglass photo
Malala Yousafzai photo

“They support me and they are encouraging me to move forward and to continue my campaign for girls' education.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

BBC television interview, Oct 2013

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.”

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXIII, Section 4, p. 375

Winnifred Harper Cooley photo

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Mortimer J. Adler photo

“An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: Reforming Education: The Schooling of a People and Their Education Beyond Schooling (1977), p. 255

John Rogers Searle photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“Prison itself is a tremendous education in the need for patience and perseverance. It is above all a test of one's commitment.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Everett Dean Martin photo
Judith Krug photo

“One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.”

Source: Motivation and Personality (1954), p. 255.

Newton Lee photo
Mike Ness photo
Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Chris Cornell photo
Walter Bagehot photo

“The name ‘London Banker’ had especially a charmed value. He was supposed to represent, and often did represent, a certain union of pecuniary sagacity and educated refinement which was scarcely to be found in any other part of society.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/lsadm10.txt (1873)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi photo

“Every education minister today has a chance of introducing in his education today some simple technique, some simple natural insights into the total reality of life, which the physical sciences have explored in terms of “Unified Field”, which the ancient Vedic wisdom has located in the Self referral consciousness of everyone.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Quoted from: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Main Message - from Victory Day, October 21, 2007 Maharishi Channel http://www.bienfaits-meditation.com/en/maharishi/videos/maharishi_main_message_2007

Michelle Obama photo

“Every day, you have the power to choose our better history — by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right, by sharing the lessons of Brown versus Board of Education, the lessons you learned right here in Topeka, wherever you go for the rest of your lives.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Quoted on Yahoo News!, "First lady tells Kansas students to fight bias" (16 May 2014) http://news.yahoo.com/first-lady-tells-kansas-students-fight-bias-021747701.html
2010s

Thomas Carlyle photo
Fred Hoyle photo
Max Frisch photo
Cyril Connolly photo

“I greet you, my educated fellow bourgeois, whose interests and whose doubts I share.”

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 1: The Next Ten Years (p. 5)

Mike Huckabee photo
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
William Godwin photo
Suzanne Mubarak photo

“I do not believe that in Egypt we can prohibit it [polygamy] by law…. Polygamy cannot be prevented by force, but through education.”

Suzanne Mubarak (1941) former First Lady of Egypt

Polygamy and Female Circumcision Can Only Be Abolished Through Education, Not by Force. A Female Egyptian President - Not in the Near Future http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1399 March 2007

Francis Escudero photo
Peter Kropotkin photo

“Educated men — "civilized," as Fourier used to say with disdain — tremble at the idea that society might some day be without judges, police, or gaolers.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Here Kropotkin seems to be refering to the French philosopher Charles Fourier, and not the French scientist Joseph Fourier.
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Dana Gioia photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Ben Carson photo

“Education is a fundamental principle of what made America a success. We can't afford to throw any young people away.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Carson at CPAC: How to destroy America in 4 steps" http://humanevents.com/2013/03/17/dr-ben-carson-at-cpac-2013-how-to-destroy-america-in-four-easy-steps/, Human Events (March 17, 2013)

Bob Rae photo

“We spend the vast bulk of money in the health, welfare, and education systems in the later years of life. Yet it is in the earliest years that life chances are moulded and set.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Six, The Second Question: Health, Education, and the Democratic Economy, p. 124

Calvin Coolidge photo
Aron Ra photo
Everett Dean Martin photo

“Whoever is concerned about his education should be on his guard against propaganda.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 45

Syed Ahmed Khan photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“He is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as Divine Law, and not as a book of a human being made for education or entertainment.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

On Muhammad, in Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Noten und Abhandlungen zum West-östlichen Diwan (1958), WA I, 7, 32; translator unknown

William Luther Pierce photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Hal Clement photo
Koenraad Elst photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
Alfred Rosenberg photo
Max Brooks photo

“Do you know how many times, when I was a kid, going to Europe, having a Frenchman try to get on my case about Vietnam. And that wasn't the problem, do you know what it was like to have other kids, other American students go, "yeah, it's pretty bad, in Vietnam, we should, yeah". And I'd be like, 'but, mhmm, French Indochina.', and they'd be like, "Oh is that near Vietnam" (groans). We don't educate our young people, and then we send them out into the world, as ambassadors as lameness. So no, no world empire, I don't want to be responsible for the plumbing in Rwanda, but we do need to become as much of a student of them as they are of us. Because, here's the thing. Well, the problem with the global village, remember in the early 90's, with the term now, global village, well the problem with the global village is that a lot of people are waking up realizing that they are in the global villages ghetto. And now with media, we are broadcasting these images of our wealth, and our power, our society, and the people in the global village are looking up on the hill seeing that mansion, but we're not looking down into the slum, and we need to do that. There's just so many times you can drive slowly through the ghetto in a rich convertible before you get carjacked. So this is what I mean, we need to engage…”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

Newton Lee photo
Sarah Grimké photo
David Jewett Waller, Sr. photo

“The time [will] come when a thousand students [will] be assembled on the hill for the purpose of seeing an education.”

David Jewett Waller, Sr. (1815–1893) Pennsylvanian minister and civic leader

1875, as attributed in Preacher, Entrepreneur: Rev. D.J. Waller Sr. by William M. Ballie (2011)

C. N. R. Rao photo
Orlando Figes photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

J 10
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Anthony Burgess photo
A.C. Cuza photo

“The duty of universities is toward their nation, for which they must prepare leaders in all fields and these must be necessarily ethnically native. For it is intolerable that a nation educate for itself alien leaders in its universities.”

A.C. Cuza (1857–1947) Romanian politician

From "Ştiinţa antisemitismului" ("The Science of Anti-Semitism"), Apararea Nationala ("The National Defense") No. 16, Nov. 15, 1922, lst year.

Matt Dillon photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Ernest Dimnet photo
Ron Paul photo
Ralph Bunche photo
Edward Said photo
Paulo Freire photo

“Never before have self-suffiency and education been so important, and they are virtually inseparable from survival.”

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Three: "Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons".