“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”

—  T.S. Eliot

Source: Quoted in Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 89

Last update April 20, 2022. History

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T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot 270
20th century English author 1888–1965

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“If children have interests then education happens.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in Ted Talk "The child-driven education" http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html by Sugata Mitra (2012)
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“Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Einstein did write this quote in "On Education" from 1936, which appeared in Out of My Later Years, but it was not his own original quip, he attributed it to an unnamed "wit".
Very popular in French: "La culture est ce qui reste lorsque l’on a tout oublié" (Culture is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything). Attributed in French to Édouard Herriot (1872-1957) and, in English, sometimes to Ortega y Gasset. Another French variant is "la culture est ce qui reste lorsqu'on a oublié toutes les choses apprises" (Culture is that which remains if one has forgotten everything one has learned), which appears in the 1912 book Propos Critiques by Georges Duhamel, p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?id=Xpk_AAAAIAAJ&q=%22la+culture+est+ce+qui+reste+lorsqu%27on+a+oubli%C3%A9+toutes+les+choses+apprises%22#search_anchor. And another English variant is "Culture is that which remains with a man when he has forgotten all he has learned" which appears in The Living Age: Volume 335 from 1929, p. 159 http://books.google.com/books?id=tHFRAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Culture+is+that+which+remains+with+a+man+when+he+has+forgotten+all+he+has+learned%22#search_anchor, where it is attributed to "Edouard Herriot, French Minister of Education". Another English variant is "Education is that which remains behind when all we have learned at school is forgotten", which appears in The Education Outlook, vol. 60 p. 532 http://books.google.com/books?id=dNcgAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA532#v=onepage&q=%22education%20is%20that%20which%20remains%22&f=false (from an issue dated 2 December 1907), where it is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The saying is found in an 1891 article by Swedish writer Ellen Key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Key, "Själamorden i skolorna", which was published in the journal "Verdandi", no. 2, pages 86-98 (the saying is on p. 97). The same article was republished later as a chapter in her 1900 book "Barnets Århundrade". Here is the quote in Swedish ( p. 160 https://archive.org/stream/barnetsrhundrade02ellenkey#page/n167/mode/2up): Men bildning är lyckligtvis icke blott kunskap om fakta, utan enligt en ypperlig paradox: »det, som är kvar, sedan vi glömt allt, vad vi lärt». Here it is from the 1909 English translation of the book ( p. 231 https://archive.org/stream/centurychild00frangoog#page/n246/mode/2up): "But education happily is not simply the knowledge of facts, it is, as an admirable paradox has put it, what is left over after we have forgotten all we have learnt." From the way Ellen Key puts it, she doesn’t take credit for the saying, but rather refers to it as an already known “paradox” that she explicitly puts between quotation marks.
Misattributed

“The meaning I have given here to "language education" represents it as a form of metaeducation. That is, one learns a subject and, at the same time, learns what the subject is made of.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: The meaning I have given here to "language education" represents it as a form of metaeducation. That is, one learns a subject and, at the same time, learns what the subject is made of.... If it be said that such learning will prevent students from assimilating the facts of a subject, my reply is that this is the only way by which the facts can truly be assimilated. For it is not education to teach students to repeat sentences they do not understand so that they may pass examinations. That is the way of the computer. I prefer the student to be a programmer.

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“Research can be undertaken in any kind of environment, as long as you have the interest. I believe that true education means fostering the ability to be interested in something.”

Sumio Iijima (1939) Japanese nanotechnologist

About myself, To the younger generation http://www.nec.co.jp/rd/en/innovative/cnt/myself.html, in Innovative Engine, column for NEC researchers, Sep.25, 2007 (4th edition)

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“They have no interest in — or aptitude for — persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"McCarthyism: The Rosetta Stone of Liberal Lies" (8 November 2007) http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2007/11/08/mccarthyism_the_rosetta_stone_of_liberal_lies/page/full/.
2007
Context: Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories — the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears' career, etc., etc. — when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U. S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy.
Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in — or aptitude for — persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies.

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“It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us.”

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 32
Context: It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us. Visiting an American university — not mine — several years after this, I was introduced to one of the first of the great American historians of Nazi Germany. He lived in a comfortable house at the edge of the campus, where he collected not only books on his topic but also the official china of the Third Reich. His dogs, two enormous German shepherds, patrolled the front yard day and night. Over drinks with other faculty members in his living room, he told me in no uncertain terms how he despised Hitler’s crimes and wanted to expose them in the greatest possible detail to the civilized world. I left the party early, walking carefully past those big dogs, unable to shake my revulsion.

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