The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.
We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.
I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
Anyone who stops learning is old — whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable — regardless of physical capacity.
Every child must be encouraged to get as much education as he has the ability to take. We want this not only for his sake - but for the future of our nation's sake. Nothing matters more to the future of our country: not our military preparedness - for armed might is worthless if we lack the brainpower to build world peace; not our productive economy - for we cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government - for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.
A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.
A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education...appears to be an object of vital importance...
Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
or simply: