Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing—the rest is mere sheep herding.

Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.

What harm is there in getting knowledge and learning, were it from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter mitten, or an old slipper? 

The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

Repetition is the mother of education.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education.