The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.

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

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

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

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

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad. 

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

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

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

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? 

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

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