The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. 

Anyone who has a child should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.

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

The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

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

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? 

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

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

All that we know is nothing can be known. 

Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

That which is evil is soon learned. 

Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevist forever.

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