Quotes about education
Teachers, students and the purpose of schooling. Quotes about education from reformers, philosophers and people who remembered their own lessons.
The library has 350 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about education
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Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius Analects, II.15 · translated by James Legge -
’Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
Alexander Pope Moral Essays. Epistle i, Line 149 -
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Alexander Pope The Wife of Bath. Her Prologue, Line 369 -
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading; Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.
William Shakespeare Henry VIII, Act iv. Sc. 2 -
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 15 -
A man who has learnt little, grows old like an ox; his flesh grows, but his knowledge does not grow.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 152 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.
Edward Young Love of Fame, Satire i. Line 89 -
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
William Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew, Act i. Sc. 1 -
Ah, happy years! once more who would not be a boy?
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto ii. Stanza 23 -
Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom.
John Milton Il Penseroso, Line 79 -
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
William Wordsworth The Tables Turned -
Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Percy Bysshe Shelley Julian and Maddalo -
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Francis Bacon Of Studies -
Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.
William Cowper The Task: Winter Walk at Noon -
Small have continual plodders ever won Save base authority from others’ books. These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights That give a name to every fixed star Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
William Shakespeare Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act i. Sc. 1 -
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice -
The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.
Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller, Line 356 -
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching—that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
An act carelessly performed, a broken vow, and hesitating obedience to discipline, all this brings no great reward.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 312 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Let every man consider virtue as what devolves on himself. He may not yield the performance of it even to his teacher.
Confucius Analects, XV.35 · translated by James Legge -
The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
Confucius Analects, XIV.3 · translated by James Legge -
When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.
Confucius Analects, VII.21 · translated by James Legge -
We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 139 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Travel in the younger sort is a part of education; in the older, a part of experience.
Francis Bacon Essays -
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Mutiny Acts are needed only by officers who command without authority. Divine right needs no whip.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen Mary Tudor.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Other religions, as the pagan, are more popular, for they consist in externals. But they are not for educated people.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 251 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Memory, joy, are intuitions; and even mathematical propositions become intuitions, for education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 95 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
There are few in the world who attain to the teaching without words, and the advantage arising from non-action.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 43.2 · translated by James Legge -
With just enough of learning to misquote.
Lord Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 66 -
The more light we have, the more greatness and the more baseness we discover in man. Ordinary men—those who are more educated: philosophers, they astonish ordinary men—Christians, they astonish philosophers.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 443 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Let him appear and prove it. There is no principle, however natural to us from infancy, which may not be made to pass for a false impression either of education or of sense.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 82 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
What other men thus teach, I also teach. The violent and strong do not die their natural death. I will make this the basis of my teaching.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 42.3 · translated by James Legge -
Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life -
No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.
Seneca -
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life -
A self-denial no less austere than the saint’s is demanded of the scholar.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
It is a main lesson of wisdom to know your own from another’s.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
You do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what he was not, and what he will remain for ever.
John Ruskin Unto This Last -
In the sphere of true Art there is no preparatory school, but there is a way of preparation; and the best preparation is the interest of the most insignificant pupil in the work of the master. Colour-grinders have often made excellent painters.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Literature and Art, No. 511 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The first use of education is to enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest men on all points of earnest difficulty.
John Ruskin Sesame and Lilies -
Something like that is what should pass between a teacher and ingenuous youths.
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. XIX · translated by Hastings Crossley -
He who learns and makes no use of his learning is a beast of burden with a load of books.
Saadi -
We see that a carpenter becomes a carpenter by learning certain things: that a pilot, by learning certain things, becomes a pilot.
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. LXVI · translated by Hastings Crossley -
A Philosopher’s school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole.
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. CXXI · translated by Hastings Crossley -
Teach them then, and show them without being angry.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VI.27 · translated by George Long -
All the world says that, while my Tao is great, it yet appears to be inferior to other systems of teaching. Now it is just its greatness that makes it seem to be inferior. If it were like any other system, for long would its smallness have been known!
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 67.1 · translated by James Legge -
People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral teaching.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CCCXIX -
All artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. LXXXVIII -
People never will recollect, that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CCCLXXIII -
The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 261 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
You can teach simple drawing, and you will find it an implement of learning of extreme value.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. XCIV -
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 in Grosvenor Square.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Besides, they always smell of bread and butter.
Lord Byron Beppo, Stanza 39 -
By learning the evil elements in nature we despise death, by learning those of society we despise life.
Nicolas Chamfort Maxims and Thoughts, No. 65 · translated by William G. Hutchison -
Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.
Alexander Pope