Quotes about Education

In short, contrary to the founders—and in ways they do not realize themselves—Americans today are heedlessly pursuing a vision of freedom that is short-lived and suicidal. Once again, freedom without virtue, leadership without character, business without trust, law without customs, education without meaning and medicine, science and technology without human considerations can end only in disaster.

The modern world is highly secular in certain parts, and nowhere more than in the world of the educated elites. Such people are notoriously "tone deaf" and their natural habitat is "a world without windows," as Weber and Berger have described them.

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence.

The proper school to learn art is not life but art

A good book, in the language of the book-sellers, is a salable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.

Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.

To have a master and teacher is not the same thing as being mastered and taught.

From first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take in all our clues about living from the people and powers around us.

Educate our students as whole people, and they will bring all of who they are to the demands of being human in private and public life. The present and future well being of humankind asks nothing less of us.

This means that every moment of discipline and correction must be accompanied with instruction.

It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.