#education

"Farms and food production should be, I submit, at least as important as who pierced their navel in Hollywood this week. Please tell me I'm not the only one who believes this. Please. As a culture, we think we're well educated, but I'm not sure that what we've learned necessarily helps us survive."

"In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system!"

"What we can change is our perceptions, which have the effect of changing everything."

"In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile"

"I spoke of the irony of the Taliban wanting female teachers and doctors for women yet not letting girls go to school to qualify for these jobs"

"You can’t destroy knowledge. You can stamp it under and burn it up and forbid it to be, but somewhere it will survive."

"I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!"

"Life is three hours journey; childhood, adulthood & old-hood; filled with inspiration, perspiration and desperation."

"It is better to enlighten men’s minds than to teach them to be obstinate in their prejudices."

"Wo ein Gebildeter weilt, kann keine Rohheit aufkommen."

"Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself."

"One of George H. W. Bush's early teachers at Andover wrote, "At the moment he is intellectually immature for his powers of reasoning are not entirely developed."

"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good."

"Let us pick up our books and our pens,” I said. “They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world."

"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else."

"People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices"

"[R]aising children ... was about identifying and amplifying their strengths and virtues, and helping them find the niche where they can live these positive traits to the fullest."

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."

"I want students to engage the way a clutch on a car gets engaged: an engine can be running, making appropriate noises, burning fuel and creating exhaust fumes, but unless the clutch is engaged, nothing moves. It's all sound and smoke, and nobody gets anywhere."

"Der Lehrer [...] gibt nicht von seiner Weisheit, sondern eher von seinem Glauben und seiner Liebe."