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.

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.

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

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? 

Knowledge is an ancient error reflecting on its youth. 

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.

Education has become a prisoner of contemporaneity. It is the past, not the dizzy present, that is the best door to the future.

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

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

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

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

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.