Here are some of my absolute favorite quotes on education and learning, from a variety of sages across 2500 years. You may not agree with the sentiment of each of them, but my guess is they will all make you think!

  1. “He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC)
  2. “Much learning does not teach understanding.” Heraclitus (544 BC – 483 BC)
  3. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)
  4. “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
  5. “Learning never exhausts the mind.” Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
  6. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
  7. “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.” Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)
  8. “I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.” Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)
  9. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”  Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
  10. “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
  11. “To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
  12. “I cannot live without books.” Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
  13. “Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.” Abigail Adams (1744 – 1818)
  14. “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)
  15. “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
  16. “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
  17. “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919)
  18. “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” George Washington Carver (c.1863 – 1943)
  19. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)
  20. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
  21. “Education must not simply teach work – it must teach Life.” W.E.B. Du Bois (1868 – 1963)
  22. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)
  23. “I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
  24. “Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” G.M. Trevelyan (1876 – 1962)
  25. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
  26. “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
  27. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
  28. “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
  29. “I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.” e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962)
  30. “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” James Thurber (1894 – 1961)
  31. “The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.” Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980)
  32. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
  33. “The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.” Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988)
  34. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992)
  35.  “Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.” Thomas Sowell (1930 – )

 

Did I leave out any of your favorite quotes?

Happy learning!

Cathy

 

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