The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.

John Stuart Mill

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.

   Robert Maynard Hutchins

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

--William Butler Yeats

When I was a boy on the Mississippi River there was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped building the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built.

--Mark Twain

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

--G. K. Chesterton

Education is man's going forward from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.

Kenneth G. Johnson

Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) English critic

Education seems to be in America the only commodity of which the customer tries to get as little he can for his money.

Max Forman

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

Vernon Cooper

As the twig is bent the tree inclines.

Virgil

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

--Samuel Johnson

Information is not knowledge.

-Albert Einstein

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rabbinical saying

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.

Aristotle

Teachers are people who start things they never see finished, and for which they never get thanks until it is too late.

Max Forman

I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.

-- John W. Gardner

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

-- Malcolm Stevenson Forbes

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

--Daniel J. Boorstin ("A Case of Hypochondria" Newsweek, July 6, 1970)

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Alvin Toffler

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

--Benjamin Franklin

Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.

-- Sir Claus Moser

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

--Henry Brooks Adams

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

Annie Sullivan

If I ran a school, I'd give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots.
I'd give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

 -- Socrates

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.

-- Chinese Proverb

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts."

-- C. S. Lewis

'Las naciones marchan hacia el término de su grandeza con el mismo paso que camina la educación.
 Ellas vuelan si ésta vuela; retrogradan si retrograda.
Se precipitan y hunden en la oscuridad si se corrompe o absolutamente se abandona.'

Simón Bolívar

 Simón Bolívar.

When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

Woody Allen

Enseigner, c'est apprendre deux fois.
To teach is to learn twice.

Joseph Joubert

If I were asked to enumerate ten educational stupidities, the giving of grades would head the list... If I can't give a child a better reason for studying than a grade on a report card, I ought to lock my desk and go home and stay there.

--Dorothy De Zouche

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.

-- John Dewey

Find more quotes about Education, knowledge, wisdom and whatever at:

Pretty Good

by Charles Osgood
from the Osgood File, 1986

There once was a pretty good student
Who sat in a pretty good class
And was taught by a pretty good teacher
Who always let pretty good pass.
He wasn’t terrific at reading,
He wasn’t a whiz-bang at math,
But for him, education was leading
Straight down a pretty good path.
He didn’t find school too exciting,
But he wanted to do pretty well,
And he did have some trouble with writing
Since nobody taught him to spell.
When doing arithmetic problems,
Pretty good was regarded as fine.
5+5 needn’t always add up to be 10;
A pretty good answer was 9.
The pretty good class that he sat in
Was part of a pretty good school,
And the student was not an exception:
On the contrary, he was the rule.
The pretty good school that he went to
Was there in a pretty good town,
And nobody there seemed to notice
He could not tell a verb from a noun.
The pretty good student in fact was
Part of a pretty good mob.
And the first time he knew what he lacked was
When he looked for a pretty good job.
It was then, when he sought a position,
He discovered that life could be tough,
And he soon had a sneaking suspicion
Pretty good might not be good enough.
The pretty good town in our story
Was part of a pretty good state
Which had pretty good aspirations
And prayed for a pretty good fate.
There once was a pretty good nation
Pretty proud of the greatness it had,
Which learned much too late,
If you want to be great,
Pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad.