About Education

Doesn't Anyone Have Anything Good to Say?

One must search diligently to find laudatory comments on education (other than those pious platitudes which are fodder for commencement speeches). It appears that most persons who have achieved fame and success in the world of ideas are cynical about formal education. These people are a select few, who often achieved success in spite of their education, or even without it. As has been said, the clever largely educate themselves, those less able aren't sufficiently clever or imaginative to benefit much from education. English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) put it this way: "The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."But those tempted to take the route of self-education should heed the warning of the old maxim: "He who would educate himself should be a born educator." Benjamin Franklin, who largely educated himself, cautions: "He that teaches himself hath a fool for his master."
For those of us neither geniuses nor hopeless fools, formal education may be a useful thing–if approached in the right spirit, with an eager and open mind and a rationally skeptical attitude. This brief quote collection can be appropriately closed with some positive comments:

Education: Being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.

William A. Feather (1889-1981) American publisher and author.

An educated man is one who can entertain a new idea, entertain another person and entertain himself.

Sydney Wood

Learning makes a man fit company for himself.

Anon

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.

Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) American journalist.

Education is not the filling a bucket but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet, dramatist.

The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, political theorist, and sociological theorist.

Your Education is worth what You are worth.

Anon

When asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, "As much as the living are to the dead."

Diogenes Laertius (fl. 2nd century).

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, and inventor. Notebooks.

To be able to be caught up into the world of thought—that is educated.

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American educator and author.

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian.

Educators and architects preserve children's freedom.

Amelia Gambetti. (Villetta School- Reggio Emilia, Italy)

Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.

Wendy Kaminer.

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.

Susan Brownell Anthony (1820–1906) American civil rights leader.

Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.

Marian Wright Edelman (1939-) American activist for the rights of children.