Quotes about school and education
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Gaurav Sharma (author) photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“I am a terrible writer. You are a great writer. I went to sales school. You have a master’s degree. Put them together and you get a best-selling author’ and a ‘best-writing author.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Isadora Duncan photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“When the mayor of Nagoya denies the Nanjing Massacre, he gets blacklisted by the city of Nanjing. When the government of Sichuan denies “tofu dregs” construction [which caused the collapse of several schools], they get blacklisted by me.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei on Twitter in English (beta). (February 26, 2012) http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/
2010-, Twitter feeds, 2010-12

Camille Paglia photo
Simon Soloveychik photo
William Styron photo

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

Anthony Burgess photo

“As a nation, we English will fight and die for principles we cannot find time to teach in our free schools.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

The Oaken Heart

“.. there is a real Dada strain in the minds of the New York School of abstract painters that has emerged in the last decade.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

The Dada Painters and Poets, Schultz, Wittenborn, New York 1951, p. xiii
1950s

Kathy Griffin photo
Matt Dillon photo
Camille Paglia photo
Jacques Barzun photo
Charles Edward Merriam photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo
Harper Lee photo
Michelle Obama photo

“See, the truth is that if Princeton hadn’t found my brother as a basketball recruit, and if I hadn’t seen that he could succeed on a campus like that, it never would have occurred to me to apply to that school — never. And I know that there are so many kids out there just like me — kids who have a world of potential, but maybe their parents never went to college or maybe they’ve never been encouraged to believe they could succeed there.”

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

Statements proceeding introduction of husband at College Opportunity Summit (16 January 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/16/remarks-president-and-first-lady-college-opportunity-summit
2010s

Lyndon LaRouche photo
Lima Barreto photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Courtney B. Vance photo
Jacob Zuma photo

“South Africans cannot believe that a man who never went to school is the President and that is the reason why he must be attacked 24/7 … No one has ever said it is a miracle for this man to have become president and wrote a column about it.”

Jacob Zuma (1942) 4th President of South Africa

Speaking as patron of the Jacob Zuma Foundation at Dube House official residence, Morningside, South Africans cannot believe they have an uneducated president – Zuma http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/south-africans-cannot-believe-they-have-an-uneducated-president-zuma-20160115, News24, 15 January 2016

Richard Rodríguez photo
Terry Winograd photo

“There is a tendency to throw computers at third world problems, which I think is often a distraction. Putting computers in the schools is great, but it may be more important to put teachers in the schools.”

Terry Winograd (1946) American computer scientist

"Talking with Terry Winograd" http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/t_winograd_1.html, Ubiquity 3 (23), 29 July 2002.

Amitabh Bachchan photo
José Rizal photo
Paul Graham photo
Warren Farrell photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Stevie Nicks photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Jeff Foxworthy photo

“[about a clerk, after recounting a story he read in which someone presented a store cashier with a million dollar bill and asked for change]
She goes "I'll bet it was a counterfeit million dollar bill."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Kinda like your high school diploma, huh?
Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

Vera Farmiga photo
Fidel Castro photo
James A. Garfield photo
Betsy DeVos photo

“I would imagine that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.”

Betsy DeVos (1958) 11th United States Secretary of Education

Betsy DeVos suggests guns be allowed in schools threatened by grizzly bears https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/18/betsy-devos-guns-schools-grizzly-bears (2017)

George W. Bush photo

“As you serve others, you can inspire others. I’ve been inspired by the examples of many selfless servants. Winston Churchill, a leader of courage and resolve, inspired me during my Presidency—and, for that matter, in the post-presidency. Like Churchill, I now paint. Unlike Churchill, the painting isn’t worth much without the signature. In 1941, he gave a speech to the students of his old school during Britain’s most trying times in World War II. It wasn’t too long, and it is well-remembered. Prime Minister Churchill urged, 'Never give in… in nothing, great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense'. I hope you’ll remember this advice. But there’s a lesser-known passage from that speech that I also want to share with you. 'These are not dark days. These are great days. The greatest our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race'. When Churchill uttered these words, many had lost hope in Great Britain’s chance for survival against the Nazis. Many doubted the future of freedom. Today, some doubt America’s future, and they say our best days are behind us. I say, given our strengths—one of which is a bright new generation like you—these are not dark days. These are great days.”

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

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Daniel Handler photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Robert Frost photo

“It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling
To get adapted to my kind of fooling.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"It Takes All Sorts" (1962)
1960s

“Intellectualism is not taught in school.”

Jules de Gaultier (1858–1942) French philosopher

Feuilleton philosophique, Introduction à la vie intellectuelle, "Revue blanche", IX (1895)

Naomi Klein photo
Eva Mendes photo
Fisher Ames photo
Wen Jiabao photo
David Fleming photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns. You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you're under audit. So you've got to ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he's not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax. So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statements, they don't give you the tax rate. They don't give you all the details that tax returns would. And it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he's ever going to release his tax returns, because there's something he's hiding.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze.
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Roger Ebert photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Every child in America should be able to play outside without fear, walk home without danger, and attend a school without being worried about drugs or gangs or violence.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Trump at MCCA Winter Conference https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/08/remarks-president-trump-mcca-winter-conference (8 February 2017)
2010s, 2017, February

Aron Ra photo
K. Barry Sharpless photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“You could fire a grapefruit out of a cannon over the best law schools in the country - and that includes Chicago - and not hit an originalist.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On modern teaching of law: Speech at University of Chicago Law School http://maroon.uchicago.edu/news/articles/2003/05/09/justice_scalia_speak.php, (6 May 2003).
2000s

Kent Hovind photo
George W. Bush photo
Carl Panzram photo

“I am 36 years old and I have been a criminal all of my life. I have 11 felony convictions against me. I have served 20 years of my life in Jails, Reform Schools and prisons. I know why I am a criminal. Others may have different theories as to my life but I have no theory about it. I know the facts. If any man ever was a habitual criminal. I am one. In my lifetime I have broken every law that was ever made by both Man and God. If either had made more, I should cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few peopel ever consider it worth while to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think it is necessary to do is to catch me, try me convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and then turn me loose again. That is the system that is in practice today in this country. The consequences are that such that any one and every one can see. crime and lots of it. Those who are sincere in thier desire to put down crime, are to be pitied for all of thier efforts which accomplish so little in the desired direction. They are the ones who are decieved by thier own ignorance and by the trickery and greed of others who profit the most by crime.”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, p. 187, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

Pete Stark photo

“Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion! Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W. Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, October 8, 2002, in opposition to the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq

Jefferson Davis photo

“Julia Hayden, the colored school teacher, one of the latest victims of the White man's League, was only seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of respectable parents in Maury County, Tennessee, and had been carefully educated at the Central College, Nashville, a favorite place for the instruction of youth of both sexes of her race. She is said to have possessed unusual personal attractions as well as intelligence. Under the reign of slavery as it is defined and upheld by Davis and Toombs, Julia Hayden would probably have been taken from her parents and sent in a slave coffle to New Orleans to be sold on its auction block. But emancipation had prepared for her a different and less dreadful fate. With that strong desire for mental cultivation which marked the colored race since their freedom, in all circumstances where there is an opportunity left them for its exhibition, the young girl had so improved herself as to become capable of teaching others. She went to Western Tennessee and took charge of a school. Three days after her arrival at Hartsville, at night, two white men, armed with their guns, appeared at the house where she was staying, and demanded the school teacher. She fled, alarmed, to the room of the mistress of the house. The White Leaguers pursued. They fired their guns I through the floor of the room and the young girl fell dead within. Her murderers escaped.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

"Louisiana and the Rule of Terror" http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=EL18741010.2.9#, The Elevator (10 October 1874), Volume 10, Number 26.

Alan Blinder photo
Leona Lewis photo
Aleister Crowley photo

“I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that pæderastic passions among schoolboys 'do no harm'; further, I think them the only redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

"Energized Enthusiasm : A Note On Theurgy" in The Equinox Vol. 1 no. 9 (Spring 1913).

William Penn photo
George W. Bush photo
Charles Lamb photo
Mike Huckabee photo

“I'm not familiar that they're dodging it. Maybe they are. But I think schools also ought to be fair to all views. Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that's why it's called the theory of evolution.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Arkansans Ask
Television
July 2004, quoted in * Jason
Wiles
Is Evolution Arkansas's Hidden Curriculum?
2005-01-01
Reports of the National Center for Science Education
25
1-2
32-36
http://ncse.com/rncse/25/1-2/is-evolution-arkansass-hidden-curriculum
2011-03-01

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor photo
Daniel Handler photo
William Cowper photo

“The sounding jargon of the schools.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Truth, line 367.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Amrita Sher-Gil photo

“I was positively stunned and have straightaway become a votary of Mathura art to the exclusion of all the other and later schools. I had some of the things in reproductions but never dreamt they were so magnificent. With the possible exception of Mahabalipuram I don’t think I have seen anything in Indian sculpture that I liked so much.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

In [Dalmia, Yashodhara, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=KmMctE3wAgIC&pg=PT152, 15 January 2013, Penguin Books Limited, 978-81-8475-921-1, 152–]
Sikh Heritage,Amrita Shergil

Phillip Guston photo
William O. Douglas photo
Halle Berry photo

“When a young woman tells me that she wants to become and actor, I say, 'No, be a writer. Or go to business school and learn how to run a studio.' The only real change will come from behind the scenes.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

On gender issues in the entertainment industry — reported in Geoff Pevere (April 13, 2007) "Berry almost chose bylines over marquees", The Toronto Star, p. D06.

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Wendy Doniger photo
Jackie DeShannon photo
Dogen photo
Warren Farrell photo

“During what years should a child be introduced to better ways of giving and receiving criticisms – to what I call “relationship language”? Before school age. The best teacher? Parents.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 36.