Quotes about school and education
page 18

Ai Weiwei photo

“Consider why the quality of school dinners is declining, even as more and more golf courses are opened.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ Gold Is Not the Real Measure of a Nation http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/25/olympics2008.china,” Guardian, August 25, 2008.
2000-09, 2008

Frida Kahlo photo
Evelyn Waugh photo
Robert Benchley photo
Jacques Barzun photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“This earth is higher than all the heavens; this is the greatest school in the universe.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Roger Ebert photo

“It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-pink-panther-2006 of The Pink Panther (10 February 2006)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Lloyd deMause photo
Fenella Fielding photo

“I had to hide every morning, until Daddy had gone out to work. And then stay out late to try to avoid him in the evening. Because of these terrible rows. Mummy would come and try to get me to go back home in the middle of the day. After about a year the school said look, this cannot carry on. I had to leave.”

Fenella Fielding (1927–2018) English actress

Why she dropped out of drama school
Interview: Independent, Sunday 24 February 2008 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-lady-vanishes-what-ever-happened-to-fenella-fielding-785265.html

Lois Duncan photo

“Killing Mr. Griffin doesn't encourage violence in schools any more than the story of Cain and Able encourages children to kill their younger brothers.”

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

On violence in her novels, interview in Absolute Write (2002)
1990–2002

Ron Paul photo

“Most often, our messing around and meddling in the affairs of other countries have unintended consequences. Sometimes just over in those countries that we mess with. We might support one faction, and it doesn't work, and it's used against us. But there's the blowback effect, that the CIA talks about, that it comes back to haunt us later on. For instance, a good example of this is what happened in 1953 when our government overthrew the Mossadegh government and we installed the Shah, in Iran. And for 25 years we had an authoritarian friend over there, and the people hated him, they finally overthrew him, and they've resented us ever since. That had a lot to do with the taking of the hostages in 1979, and for us to ignore that is to ignore history… Also we've antagonized the Iranians by supporting Saddam Hussein, encouraging him to invade Iran. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? But the on again off again thing is what bothers me the most. First we're an ally with Osama bin Laden, then he's our archenemy. Our CIA set up the madrasah schools, and paid money, to train radical Islamists, in Saudi Arabia, to fight communism… But now they've turned on us… Muslims and Arabs have long memories, Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized… The founders were absolutely right: stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations, mind our own business, bring our troops home, and have a strong defense. I think our defense is weaker now than ever.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

Democritus photo

“In the weightiest matters we must go to school to the animals, and learn spinning and weaving from the spider, building from the swallow, singing from the birds,—from the swan and the nightingale, imitating their art.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Piet Joubert photo

“They [the field cornets] should have seen to it that the bible be used in schools, as the law prescribes.”

Piet Joubert (1834–1900) Boer politician and general

Thomas Francois Burgers, MS Appelgryn, 1979, p. 62
:In 1874, in reply to a controversy which arose due to remaining influence of the state church (Hervormde Kerk) in ZAR schools, which for the first time were not state controlled

Suze Robertson photo

“No, absolutely not, I have never been what one calls a gifted child, never a dreamer. I didn't think of making fantasies with the pencil on the paper, although at school we learned to draw and play music of course. But in those days the piano was actually what I preferred most... But until my eighteenth year I have been hesitating long between both [painting and playing piano]..”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson: Nee, ik ben volstrekt nooit wat men noemt een begaafd kind geweest, nooit een droomster. Aan fantasie met 't potlood op 't papier dacht ik niet, al leerden we op school natuurlijk ook teekenen en muziek. Maar in dien tijd was de piano eigenlijk meer mijn fort.. .Toch heb ik tot mijn achttiende jaar tussen die beide lang gewankeld.
Source: 1900 - 1922, Onder de Menschen: Suze Robertson' (1912), p. 30

George W. Bush photo

“Good morning. This coming week I will be making the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to address a joint session of Congress. We have some business to attend to called the budget of the United States. The federal budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint I submit this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts more than any other – $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security, Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities. The plan I submit will fund our highest national priorities. Education gets the biggest percentage increase of any department in our federal government. We won't just spend more money on schools and education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we know whether schools are teaching and children are learning? Social Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their commitments. And every dollar of Social Security and Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and Medicare.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (February 2001)

Brian W. Kernighan photo

“Advice to students: Leap in and try things. If you succeed, you can have enormous influence. If you fail, you have still learned something, and your next attempt is sure to be better for it. Advice to graduates: Do something you really enjoy doing. If it isn’t fun to get up in the morning and do your job or your school program, you’re in the wrong field.”

Brian W. Kernighan (1942) Canadian computer scientist

"Leap In and Try Things: Interview with Brian Kernighan" https://web.archive.org/web/20110701151454/http://www.harmonyatwork.in/blog/2009/10/leap-in-and-try-things-brian-kernighan/ from Harmony at Work blog http://www.harmonyatwork.in/blog/.

George Holmes Howison photo
Jimmy Wales photo

“To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Long displayed quote on his User page at Wikipedia, and many other Wikimedia projects

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" No Worst, There Is None http://www.bartleby.com/122/41.html", lines 1-2
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Ken Ham photo
Frances Kellor photo
John Stossel photo
Jeff Foxworthy photo
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker photo
Henri Fayol photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo
George Long photo
Sarah Chang photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Mark Ames photo

“Zero tolerance policies, heavy police responses to what would have once been considered empty boy boasting, and the increased fear and suspicion that they inspire only fuel more rage. The toxic school culture is only reinforced by repressive measures.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 177.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

John Lancaster Spalding photo
Mark Satin photo

“Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from Maine to Alabama to California, from ghettos, suburbs and schools, young Americans are coming to Canada to resist the draft.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 4.
Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada (1968)

Bernard Harcourt photo
William Westmoreland photo
El Lissitsky photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“We are confident that the Islamic logic, culture, and discourse can prove their superiority in all fields over all schools of thought and theories.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Ahmadinejad on His Proposal for a Jewish State in Europe and on Iran's Nuclear Energy http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=987 Jan. 2006.
2006

Stella Vine photo
Henry Stephens Salt photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Frances Farmer photo
Michael Marmot photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Theodore Kaczynski photo
Adolf Eichmann photo
George Herbert photo

“682. One father is more than a hundred schoole-masters.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

William Jones photo

“The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy… [N]othing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Gotama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

II. pp. 238-239
"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Michael Howard photo

“Let me make it clear: this grammar school boy will take no lessons from that public school boy on the importance of children from less privileged backgrounds gaining access to university.”

Michael Howard (1941) British politician

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo031203/debtext/31203-03.htm#31203-03_wqn4, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 415 col. 498
At Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons, December 3, 2003

Peter Jackson photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Clarence Thomas photo
George Long photo
David Lynch photo
George Marshall photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Bal Gangadhar Tilak photo
Jacques Lipchitz photo
Reggie Watts photo

“I was on the football team because I wanted to experience the different iconic social classes of high school. So football for me was an attempt to socially integrate in an interesting way. And then I didn’t like it anymore and stopped doing it and focused more on drama and science and other forms of art and music.”

Reggie Watts (1972) singer, musician and comedian

Cited in: " Comedy Bang! Bang! sidekick extraordinaire Reggie Watts sits down to talk at SXSW 2013 http://www.ifc.com/fix/2013/03/sxsw-2013-reggie-watts-on-music-high-school-and-hair" ifc.com. Posted March 10th, 2013, 8:03 PM by Melissa Locker: Watts reply to the question "You were on the football team!"

Mike Huckabee photo
Kent Hovind photo
Philo photo
Frances Kellor photo
Tom Stoppard photo
Piero Scaruffi photo
Bill Clinton photo
Simone Weil photo
Clarence Darrow photo

“The usual is always mediocre. When nature takes it into her head to make a man, she fits him with her own equipment and educates him in her own school.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Christopher Hitchens photo
El Lissitsky photo
Mao Zedong photo
Eduardo Torroja photo
Dave Sim photo
Mike Parson photo
Clement Attlee photo

“The Old School Tie can still be seen on the Government benches.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the United States Congress (13 November 1945), quoted in The Times (14 November 1945), p. 8
1940s

Bill Gates photo
Madonna photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Malala Yousafzai photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Eugène Delacroix photo