
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
J 10
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 160.
Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 145
Source: Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus (1987), p. 424
Context: I had begun by trying, for the sake of scholarly thoroughness, merely to write a short chapter for my book on the ‘culturally disadvantaged’ that I expected would succinctly review the so-called nature-nurture issue only to easily dismiss it as being of little or no importance for the subsequent study of the causes of scholastic failure and success. I delved into practically all the available literature on the genetics of intelligence, beginning with the works of the most prominent investigator in this field, Sir Cyril Burt, whom I had previously heard give a brilliant lecture entitled The Inheritance of Mental Ability’ at University College, London in 1957. The more I read in this field, the less convinced I became of the prevailing belief in the all-importance of environment and learning as the mechanisms of individual and group differences in general ability and scholastic aptitude. I felt even somewhat resentful of my prior education, that I could have gone as far as I had—already a fairly well-recognized professor of educational psychology—and yet could have remained so unaware of the crucial importance of genetic factors for the study of individual differences.
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
“If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.”
Source: Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 1
Context: The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume that there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.
Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of any education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.
Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and planes. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long?
Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 13, School Education, p. 297-298
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
"Science Past, Science Future" (1975) p. 208
General sources