These are some of my favourite   quotes about education.  As a homeschooler, I do quite   a bit of reading on the subject.  As you can see, education has   been a topic of debate and   discussion for thousands of years.

  "...and gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche" Chaucer

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. Henry Brooks Adams

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams

What scupture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. Joseph Addison

His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy. Woody Allen

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers. Woody Allen

When you are a teacher you are always in the right place at the right time. There is no wrong time for learning. Betty B. Anderson

From my grandfather's father, [I learned] to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor Meditations Book I, verse 4  

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than even their parents, for these only give them life; those the art of living well. Aristotle

There was never a genius without a tincture of insanity. Aristotle

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

We cannot learn without pain. Aristotle

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead. Aristotle

Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius. Anon.

The world is run by C students. Anon.

An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. Anon.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Francis Bacon

Knowledge is power.--Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. Francis Bacon

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men. Bill Beattie

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. Sir Max Beerbohm

Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. Ambrose Bierce

Genius. To know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things. Ambrose Bierce

I have read somewhere or other,--in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,--that history is philosophy teaching by examples.Viscount Bolingbroke

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word. Viscount Bolingbroke

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. Henry Peter Brougham

Education is the cheap defense of nations. Edmund Burke

A man who is always living in the midst of his studies and labours does not perceive when old age creeps upon him. Marcus Porcius Cato

A silly remark can be made in Latin as well as in Spanish. Cervantes

It is greater work to educate a child, in the true and larger sense of the word, than to rule a state. W.E. Channing

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know. Gilbert K. Chesterton

Without a gentle contempt for education, no gentleman's education is complete. Gilbert K. Chesterton

If you plan for a year, plant a seed. If for ten years, plant a tree. If for a hundred years, teach the people. Kuang Chung

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability. Cicero

Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns. J.M. Clarke

Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  Calvin Coolidge

Education is the fire-proofer of emotions. Frank Crane

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. John Cotton Dana

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. René Descartes

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. René Descart

Education is not preparation for life. It is life itself. John Dewey

Every great advancement in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. John Dewey

Education is a social process ... Education is rowth.... Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey

Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education. John Dewey 

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent. John Dewey 

The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples. Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. Benjamin Disraeli

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends. Benjamin Disraeli

In my opinion the prevailing systems of education are all wrong, from the first stage to the last stage. Eduation begins where it should terminate, and youth, instead of being led to the development of their faculties by the use of their senses, are made to acquire a great quantity of words, expressing the ideas of other men instead of comprehending their own faculties, or becoming acquainted with the words they are taught or the ideas the words should convey.  William Duane "Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky," 1822

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. Alexandre Dumas

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Will Durant

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Will Durant
 
I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was always at the foot of the class. Thomas Edison 

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. Albert Einstein

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from feeble minds. Albert Einstein

It is, in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of education have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly. Albert Einstein

I don't have to know everything, I just have to know where to find it when I need it. Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Albert Einstein

It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape --not from our own time, for we are bound by that-- but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our own time. T.S. Eliot

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide. Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only the educated are free. Epictetus

America is the only country left where we teach languages so that no pupils can speak them. John Erskine
 
Arriving at the truth is not an eclectic compromise between partial truths, but the discovery of a holistic concept which can explain the links between these truths. Miguel Ángel Escotet

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. Euripides

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. Edward Everett

Institutions that were once alive have been stuffed and preserved out of deference, honored for the service they once performed rather than for their present usefulness. It is likeness we admire. What would terrify us, if it were alive and functioning, is sleekly mounted on a pedestal and regarded with affectionate esteem all the greater because the object of our regard is safely dead. It is much simpler and easier to collect and caresss the trophies of our democratic inheritance than it is to fashion up-to-date tools with which to work on our current problems. Charles Ferguson

Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your  throat. Martin H. Fischer

The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as non-intellectual. Paulo Freire

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

It's more fun to arrive at a conclusion than to justify it. Malcolm Forbes

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you  do know and what you don't. Anatole France

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. Sigmund Freud

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper. Robert Frost

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything. Robert Frost

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself. Galileo

If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. Stanley Garn

There is nothing more fruitful than ignorance aware of itself. José Ortega y Gasset

We ought not to be like the children of Lot's wife who persist in making history with their heads turned backwards. José Ortega y Gasset

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison. William Glasser

"Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. . . . 1. Confusion. 2. Class Position. 3. Indifference. 4. Emotional Dependency. 5. Intellectual Dependency. 6. Provisional Self-Esteem. 7. One Can't Hide. . . . It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things." John Taylor Gatto, speech on accepting 1991 New York State teacher of the year award, reprinted in Gatto's Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

The sleep of reason breeds monsters. goya

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving. Russell Green

You live and learn...or you don't live long. Robert Heinlein

Genius is nothing but continued attention. Claude A. Helvetius

To be happy and to be powerful is only a matter of perfecting the science of education. Claude A Helvetius

None so deaf as those that will not hear. None so blind as those that will not see. Mathew Henry

We cannot have real learning in school if we think it is our duty and our right to tell children what they must learn. John Holt

No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back.  John Holt

Dare to be wise; begin! He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. Horace

The schools of the country are the future in miniature. Tehyi Hsieh

You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think. Elbert Hubbard

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. Victor Hugo

If we taught children to speak, they'd never learn. William Hull

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

Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible. Robert M. Hutchins

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen. Aldous Huxley

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am. Alice James

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of  body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. Thomas Jefferson

I have sworn on the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Thomas Jefferson

The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well, what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.  Thomas Jefferson

I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth.  If the white man wants to live in peace with the indian...we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers... free to think and talk and act for myself. Chief Joseph, Nez Perce

To teach is to learn twice. Joseph Joubert

Children need models rather than critics. Joseph Joubert

Ask the young: they know everything. Joseph Joubert

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. Carl Jung

The highest result of education is tolerance. Helen Keller

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. John Fitzgerald Kennedy

At times things can happen outside school that compensate for closed, alienating classrooms. Herbert R. Kohl

We, the people, are the rightful masters of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the constitution. Abraham Lincoln

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should be doing for themselves. Abraham Lincoln

The philosophy in the classroom of this generation is the philosophy of government in the next. Abraham Lincoln

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth. John Locke

I am much afraid that the schools and universities will prove to be the great gates to hell unless they diligently labour to explain the Holy Scriptures and engrave them upon the hearts of youth. I advise no one to send their child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution that does not unceasingly occupy its students with the Word of God must become corrupt. Martin Luther

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best  security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty. James Madison

Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolate by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened. Horace Mann

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men,--the balance-wheel of the social machinery. Horace Mann

The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron. Horace Mann

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Abraham Maslow

It wasn’t until quite late in life that I discovered how easy is to say, "I don’t know". W. Somerset Maugham

The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods. Margaret Mead

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. H.L. Mencken

What is the first part of politics? Education. What is the second? Education. And the third? Education. Jules Michelet

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do; never does what he can do. John Stuart Mill

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr. Mohammed

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one. Moliere

The first idea that the child must acquire in order to be actively disciplined is that of the difference between good and evil; and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity. María Montessori

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know. Michel de Montaigne

He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. Michel de Montaigne

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself. Michel de Montaigne

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form. Michel de Montaigne

It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him. Michel de Montaigne

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books. Michel de Montaigne

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity. Michel de Montaigne

Study has been my sovereign remedy against life's disappointment, I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve. Montesquieu

You have to study a long time to know anything at all. Montesquieu

Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility. Malcolm Muggeridge, quoted in The Observer

It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity. Benito Mussolini; The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism 1932.

Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable. John Patrick

Learning is discovering that something is possible. Fritz Perls

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. Plato

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. Plutarch

A man should never be ashamed to say he has been wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. Alexander Pope

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Alexander Pope

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but at forty we know it and admit it. Jules Renard

If little else, the brain is an educational toy. Tom Robbins

I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning. Carl Rogers

There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get off the thing that he was educated in. Will Rogers

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. Theodore Roosevelt

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. Theodore Roosevelt

It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young. Bertrand Russell

Education, considered as a process of forming our mental habits and our outlook on the world, is to be judged  successful in proportion as its outcome approximates to this ideal; in proportion, that is to say, as it gives us a true view of our place in society, of the relation of the whole human society to its non-human environment, and of the nature of the non-human world as it is in itself apart from our own desires and interests. Bertrand Russell

It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world. Bertrand Russell

By starting with sound, meaningful education, we make it possible for each person to add his own gift to his generation, to become a part of the progress of man. In turn, the individual makes the nation stronger, defends against its enemies, adds to its wealth, and carries forward its ideals and faith. Terry Sanford, former Governor of & Senator from North Carolina

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. George Santayana

No Pestalozzian pedagogics can turn a born simpleton into a thinker: never! Schopenhauer

As long as you live, keep learning how to live. Seneca

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. Seneca

My father must have had some elementary education for he could read and write and keep accounts inaccurately. George Bernard Shaw

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. George Bernard Shaw

I am not a teacher--only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead--ahead of myself as well as of you. George Bernard Shaw

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the environment. Unresonable people adapt the environment to themselves. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable people. George Bernard Shaw

Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never-haves, then listen close to me: anything can happen child, anything can be. Shel Silverstein

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. B.F. Skinner

We may change the pattern of family life and of educational institutions so that children will grow up to be happier people, but are we sure that happy people are more likely to survive in the world today? B.F. Skinner

Look and you will find it - what is unsought will go undetected. Sophocles

It is only the ignorant who despise education. Publius Syrus

It is better to learn late than never. Publus Syrus

Better be ignorant of a matter than half know it. Publius Syrus

We may with advantage at times forget what we know. Publius Syrus

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

Many receive advice, few profit by it. Publius Syrus

There are some remedies worse than the disease. Publius Syrus

Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers are more. Bob Talbert

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health. Henry David Thoreau

Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.  Henry David Thoreau

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. G. M. Trevelyan

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Mark Twain,  Pudd'nhead Wilson
 
The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on their parents. So they provided jails called school, equipped with tortures called education. John Updike

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher  inspires. William Arthur Ward

Why bother learning when ignorance is instantaneous? Bill Watterson's Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes

Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity. Noah Webster

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. Noah Webster

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Oscar Wilde

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer. Oscar Wilde

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately... 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

In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is  doomed.. To-day we maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment, which will then be pronounced on the uneducated. Alfred North Whitehead

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. Alfred North Whitehead

Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful Alfred North Whitehead

Education is not the filing of a pail, but the burning of a fire. William Butler Yeats